


Your Place in the Family of Things

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dream Sex, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Sexual Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:20:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8392339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: A year after Glenn's death, Maggie is building a life for herself and her infant son at the Hilltop. It's working. She's making it work. But in a way she can't define and can't escape, she's alone. She's in pain. And she's not the only one.





	1. not one for yes but two for no

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I didn't think I was actually going to do this either. Certainly not so soon after Sunday. But this turned out to be - in part - a way of working through some of my own problems with that episode, some of what made me so angry and left such a bad taste in my mouth. 
> 
> I also didn't expect this to be multiple chapters. Then I remembered that I'm me. I don't know how long it's going to be right now. We'll find out together. 
> 
> While this is currently rated Teen and Up, that rating will likely change at some point in the future, and in fact this chapter does feature a pretty graphic description of a nightmare-memory of the Lucille scene. It's only a paragraph long, so it's very skippable if you need to do that. 
> 
> A lot of you who are here are already down with Bethyl, but in case you're not, or you don't know that I tend to approach the TWDverse with that assumption, that's the assumption here. That Daryl was in love with Beth, that he never confronted it, but that Maggie knows it perfectly well. Because it's my headcanon that she does.
> 
> The final thing that I didn't expect was that any of my more regular readers would be interested in this at all. It seems like I was wrong. If you're taking a chance on this, thank you immensely for placing that kind of faith in me, and I hope I don't disappoint you. I'll do my best not to. 
> 
> ❤️
> 
> (If you'd like a printed copy of this, it's available; [the details are here.](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com/post/134034211961/fic-books) A number of other printed editions of my fanfic are available as well.)

 

> _and there was a new voice_  
>  _which you slowly_  
>  _recognized as your own,_  
>  _that kept you company_  
>  _as you strode deeper and deeper_  
>  _into the world,_  
>  _determined to do_  
>  _the only thing you could do--_  
>  _determined to save_  
>  _the only life you could save._
> 
> \- Mary Oliver, "The Journey"

 

Well over a year, and he still barely looks at her.

It's not that he's not around. He's around a lot. For one thing he's hard to avoid, since he joined her at the Hilltop - or he would be if she had the slightest interest in avoiding him. What's weird - yeah, a lot of this feels pretty goddamn weird and has for a while now - is that he doesn't seem to have any interest in avoiding her, either. He never stays in the house for any significant length of time, but he comes by. Kind of skulks around in a decidedly non-sinister way, far more awkward than anything. Checks on how she's doing for supplies - diapers, formula, lotion, and the vanilla ice cream she likes from the cow at the Safe Zone, other basics both necessary and not - and isn't as subtle about it as he probably thinks he is. Talks to her in gravelly monosyllables.

In all of the past blood-soaked year, she's barely heard his voice rise above a mutter, barely heard him speak more than one or two sentences at a time. He does most of his talking with his fists and his knife and his bow.

Does his screaming that way. She knows it. She knows him. Better than he knows.

And he's there for the baby. Might be there for the baby more than anyone or anything else, and she recognizes it because she's seen it before, is deeply acquainted with how it looks. Even if he doesn't meet her eyes, he stares into Hershel’s little face, the baby’s dark eyes glowing with all the wisdom than very new babies seem to possess.

He stares into the baby’s eyes as if he's searching for something. Something he lost a long time ago and can now barely recall, and it's frightening him. Could be he's frightened of the loss of it.

Could be he's frightened of getting it back.

~

Standing by the window now, and her in the doorway to the front room, watching them. Him. He has Hershel in his arms; Hershel has a mild rash on his legs and is fussing, and Daryl - just back from a two-day run into the outskirts of DC but wonder of wonders before he came to see her he cleaned up a little first - got to him before she did and she wasn't about to snatch him away. She sat back down in the deep old wing-backed chair in the parlor, and kept reading, and let him take the care.

Once upon a time, in a very different chair in a very different parlor, she would have been curled up with some trashy romance novel - guilty pleasure that she herself always had a fair amount of scorn for even if she loved the escapism. She didn't believe in that kind of love. Perhaps she wanted to temporarily immerse herself in a world where it _was_ real, but that didn't make it so. Sure, Daddy and Annette loved each other so much it almost hurt to see, but that was quieter, burned lower, steadily smoldering coals rather than leaping flame. And they were so lucky. Daddy was Daddy. He was so special. She wasn't him. What he could have surely wasn't for her.

Christ, she was so fucking stupid.

Really, they all were.

But that's not what she's reading. She can't imagine cracking one of those books now without hurling it across the room. She's reading an inventory list, trade requests from the Kingdom, things the Hilltop needs and things it can provide. She works. She's a leader, maybe, but even more right now - in these quieter post-war times - she's a manager. Lists like this one. Logistics. Building and fortifying. Communications and negotiations. Plans. Truth is, it's so goddamn dull that in a different life it might have made her want to rip her hair out, but now she appreciates the quiet, and the work is enough to focus on that she doesn't have the brain space for a lot of her own thinking. Meditation. Memory.

She still wakes up screaming more nights than she doesn't.

In those nightmares, those terrors in the dark, it's not just Glenn in the line on his knees. It's Beth too, Beth and she's so scared and she's trembling, crying, and when the bat crashes down on her head the wet crunch is so loud and Maggie _sees_ the top of her skull broken through her scalp, pale shards, watches her eyes roll up and her body crumple and then the blood everywhere as that fucking monster beats her sweet face into red pulp. And then it's Daddy, Daddy is next, and he's trying to be strong like before, but he's not strong enough because no one is, no one can stop it, not Rick or Michonne or Sasha or anyone, and then it's Glenn and she can't fucking watch it, not _again,_ but in classic nightmare logic she can't look away, and it's his _eye,_ his fucking _eye,_ and he's choking on his own blood and she knows he wants to say something but in her nightmares he never does. Never can. The sick fuck takes it away from him. Robs them both of everything.

And Daryl is gazing right into her eyes when Negan caves his head in.

She hasn't told anyone about any of this. She's very afraid that if she does, it'll never stop.

But that's all waiting for her in the dark, and it's not dark now. It's late afternoon, late afternoon in early autumn and warm and all golden, and the light is falling all over him as he holds her son in his arms and shushes him, murmurs to him, and at times like this when she sees him this way it's almost difficult to imagine him how he can get with a knife in his hand.

He gathers the shadows around him, cloaks himself in them. She’s keenly aware of when it started. She understands why it did, even if she's never said anything to him about it, or about _her_. But when he's with the baby they slip away. Sometimes. A little.

She crosses her arms, looks away. She's not sure why.

It's possible that it's because she senses him emerging from whatever world he spun around himself, because in the periphery of her vision she sees him lift his head, his focus locking onto her, and something deeply uncomfortable flickers behind his features. She can't define it, can't pinpoint its source, except she's not sure she's _ever_ seen him genuinely at ease, except for those few months at the prison when everything seemed like it might be okay.

So it's normal for him to look like that, really.

He takes a breath, and before he can follow it with words she rolls a shoulder and gets there first.

“Sorry.”

That's confusing to her, and it's confusing to him as well, because he tilts his head slightly, frowning at her beneath his hair - even longer now, though he did at last allow Carol to trim it a few weeks ago. His face remains at least half obscured most of the time. She's wondered more than once why it doesn't seem to affect his aim.

“For what?”

She can be honest with him. About this much, anyway. She shrugs again, laughs a bit and tips her head down. “I dunno. Guess I didn't mean to startle you.”

“You didn't,” he says softly. She's not positive she entirely believes him, but just then Hershel releases a hiccuping sob, like he's winding up for another round of wailing, and Daryl turns his attention back to him, bouncing him up and down a little. She watches Daryl slip away from her - not completely, but enough that she notices it, and something turns over in her chest when he presses his lips to the side of Hershel’s downy head.

He lets go when he's like this. Not totally, but more than at any other time. He forgets himself. He did with Judith, back when he was often helping with her while Rick worked on figuring himself out. What she saw then and what she sees now, the gentleness in him fighting to get out, at last breaking free.

It suddenly makes her angry - and she doesn't know what she's angry at. What she's angry for. She's just angry. Possibly at everything.

Everything except him.

She steps into the room, heads to the left by the door where he's left a box of baby food. It's early for that, but of course his natural impulse is to stock up, same as the rest of them, because you never know if what you've found might be the last one for a long time. And they could mash the fruits and vegetables they already grow, make it work just fine probably, but.

She picks it up, examines it. Peas and carrots, plain and reliable. She smiles faintly and glances over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

He merely grunts. She's not insulted.

“Run go alright?”

“Fine.” She doubts he’ll go into more detail than that, and it's okay, she gets it, but then the corner of his mouth quirks. “Saw a fuckin’ giraffe.”

She laughs again, mostly in surprise. Though probably she shouldn't be. Tigers and all. Having overthrown Adam and reclaimed Eden, the beasts of the earth now roam wherever they please. “Seriously?”

“Mm. Actually three of ‘em. They were just… Eatin’ the trees in a park. They looked right at us, went back to it. Not scared of nothin’.”

“Bet they don't got any reason to be.” She pauses, sets the box down and tucks her hair behind her ear. It'll be time to cut it again soon. “I wonder if they even know what we are anymore.”

Another grunt. “We don't matter to ‘em. Maybe that's how it should be.” It's unusually philosophical for him, and as he says it an expression of vague consternation tugs at his features. He doesn't continue, doesn't give her a chance to answer; he crosses the room to her and lifts Hershel carefully away from his chest. She takes him, unhesitating, but an odd disappointment sweeps through her like a chilly breeze as he turns away and heads for the door without a look back.

She feels like she should say something else. Like she shouldn't just let him walk out like this. But nothing comes to her, and then the door is closing behind him and she's alone.

Well. Not technically. But technicalities don't mean what they used to.

“Don't matter,” she whispers, laying Hershel against her shoulder. This time when he whimpers she can tell it’s hunger; formula is a stop-gap when needed but from the beginning she felt an almost disturbingly intense desire to breastfeed, and now she thinks it might ease whatever is tightening up inside her. She kisses his temple and his brow, breathing in clean baby smell - and not just that.

_Him._ Lingering.

The breath that escapes her trembles the smallest bit on its way out.

Then she happens to focus on the bench once more, and the air catches in her throat on the way back in.

She doesn't know how she missed it before. It might simply be the light, which is spreading across the glossy honey-toned wood more directly than it was a few moments ago. Regardless, she sees it now, and she bends at the waist, reaches down with her free hand and picks it up.

Little jewelry box, faux velvet, deep blue almost black. No identifying markings on it. She lifts it, swallows, and thumbs it open with a quiet _click_ \- and she somehow already knows what it'll be. Maybe not _exactly,_ but the territory it'll occupy. Internal territory that she frankly doesn't often go to, and even when she does it's often not willingly.

The same must be true for him. But he brought her this all the same, and she's as certain as she is of anything that it wasn't to hurt her. He saw it and of course he couldn't really do anything else. In no world and in no scenario could he have left it behind, and in none of those worlds or scenarios could he have kept it for himself.

Heart pendant. Sterling silver. Not one heart but a heart nestled within a heart, held and contained by it. It's not on a chain; it lies on the velvet by itself, and as the sun catches it, it melts into a pale gold.

She nearly drops it. For a single nauseating second the world twists around her and she totters, manages to hold onto it as she sinks down onto the bench, narrowly missing the box of food. The sun pushes itself relentlessly into her eyes and the world blurs away, and she clutches it, closes her hand around it and clenches as if someone might try to snatch it away from her.

She doesn't know if she can thank him the next time she sees him. She doesn't know anything anymore. She goes through the motions, she pretends and she thinks most of the time she pulls it off, but this is the truth: she's a fucking mess and she doesn't know how to be anything else anymore, and over and over the face of the man who taught her that love like fire is a true thing is all that makes her get up and keep fighting this endless war.

Glenn’s face like she’ll remember it. Whole and well. Smiling at her like he always did to break her open, eyes brilliant, so sweet. She'll brute-force herself to forget the rest of it. She will. Someday.

Something Beth told her once, that Andrea said to her. _The pain doesn't go away. You just make room for it._

_But I'm full up. I'm drowning._

“It's alright.” She rocks Hershel in her lap and squeezes her eyes shut. Through her lids it's all red. “It's alright. It's okay. We’re okay.”

_Gotta be._


	2. lady of silences, calm and distressed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeey, look who still can't reply to comments. I really do appreciate them so damn much, though, _especially_ when we're talking about a thing like this, which - again - I was very skeptical that most people would even want to read. 
> 
> And again, like all my stuff, it's bigger than I thought. Think that's a good thing, though. This is another story that feels like it shouldn't be rushed if the thing is going to be respected. 
> 
> ❤️

 

> _And pray to God to have mercy upon us_  
>  _And pray that I may forget_  
>  _These matters that with myself I too much discuss_  
>  _Too much explain_  
>  _Because I do not hope to turn again_  
>  _Let these words answer_  
>  _For what is done, not to be done again_  
>  _May the judgement not be too heavy upon us_
> 
> -T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”

 

Not all her dreams are those nightmares. Not that one specific nightmare, anyway. That should be a mercy, and sometimes it feels like it is, but at other times she would almost prefer the same one over and over, because in that case she might - maybe, possibly, she wants so much to believe it and is so afraid to - be able to get used to it. Maybe it would beat the last bleeding parts of her into scar tissue and, if she can't make room for the pain, maybe she can get to a place where it no longer matters to her.

If she sees him die enough times, maybe it won't be able to touch her anymore.

But she's not that lucky, and she's not that cursed. Her dreams vary, and the nightmares are often subtler. They creep toward her through the shadows rather than clubbing her over the head with their sheer horror. Compared to that singular nightmare, they're practically mundane.

In one of them, she's driving along the road that connects the Safe Zone with the Hilltop by the shortest route. There's nothing remarkable about it, nothing overtly threatening. It's a cloudy day in late autumn. The trees are stripped and the ground is a dull brown, everything dull and leached of color, but that's not unusual. Of course the road is otherwise deserted, but that's not strange either; travel between the three communities is now relatively easy and safe but still not exactly frequent. Gas needs to be conserved, more than ever.

So she's making a run. Sure. She's done that plenty of times. Driving one of the battered hatchbacks the Hilltop keeps in their little fleet of vehicles - driving totally alone, which _is_ a bit odd, but not enough to be alarming.

She drives and she drives. And at some point it occurs to her that she should have gotten there by now.

Even that isn't frightening immediately - and in these dreams she never remembers that she ever dreamed them before, whereas the big bad one is about as lucid as can be without actually giving her any control. She must simply have taken a wrong turn. She should be able to drive this route in her sleep - _ha_ \- but stupid mistakes get made. Stupid accidents happen. They happen all the time.

She keeps driving. What else is she supposed to do? But it's a long time, way the fuck too long, and gradually she realizes she's passing the same trees over and over, the same stumps and ditches and bends in the road. So then she swings into the turns that should be the wrong ones and it doesn't matter: same trees, same ditches, same _everything._ As ice crystallizes down her spinal cord, she comes to understand - with yet more classic nightmare logic - that this road doesn't end. That it doesn't begin. That it simply _is,_ it is forever, and she's going to be on it forever, trapped in a dull infinitely looping Nowhere-

And that's when the whistling begins.

She always wakes up at that point. She's not screaming. She would be screaming if she could breathe.

Now, she's not sleeping, and this isn't a dream. This is cold reality - literally cold; there's been an early hard front, and whereas it's been warm the last few days, before she walked out the door this morning she grabbed a jacket off the peg. The woods through which the car is passing aren't bare and dull, and in fact hardly any of the leaves are off the trees yet. But the car’s heater is all but nonfunctional, and the chill permeates.

Maggie shifts, pulls her jacket closer around her and stares out the window with her brow leaning against her hand. She catches Sasha tossing her a glance and ignores it, ignores the faint frown there. She's tired of being worried about. It's never been oppressive, and it's only started in any kind of earnest since Hershel was born, but she notices it and she's not good at pretending it isn't there. To herself if to no one else.

And telling everyone to leave her the fuck alone… She doesn't really want that either.

“Can stay as long as you want to,” Sasha says quietly. “They all miss you.”

Of course she can stay as long as she wants to. Maggie bites the inside of her cheek and closes her eyes for a few seconds, tamping down her flush of irritation. Sasha is just talking to talk, filling the silence that's been hanging over them almost since she left Hershel in Rosita’s capable hands, and even if it's all fully meant, it doesn't make the whole thing easier. Of course she can stay. Of course they miss her.

She hasn't been to the Safe Zone in over two weeks. And if someone were to sit her down and demand an explanation for this, she doubts she would be able to give them one.

But that's not because she doesn't know why.

She grunts. Nods. Doesn't look away from the window. Like a blurred ghost cast against the trees, she catches glimpse after glimpse of her own reflection. More lines than she had a few months ago. Tired eyes, hair half fallen in front of them. And that's when she thinks of _him,_ completely out of nowhere - the lines on his face, the pits under his eyes, the way those eyes are obscured by his own dark, ragged curtain of hair.

He has to have a good decade or so on her - she's not sure just _how_ old he is - but that time is merely academic. It exists only in theory. To her, it means nothing, if it ever did. What marks both their faces isn't time. It's weariness.

And pain.

“Gonna head back tonight,” she murmurs, pushing her bangs aside. “I shouldn't leave Hershel for longer.”

She half expects Sasha to protest, but Sasha says nothing. Finally Maggie peeks at her from the corner of her eye, and Sasha’s hands are locked on the wheel, her own eyes locked straight ahead, her face impassive.

Sasha is something of a mystery to her, if she's honest, even after all this time. Has been since… Well. Sasha is making it work the same as she is, she knows that much, but it's also _not_ the same. There’s a hardness to her that doesn't seem to have left her cold. She's wearing armor that doesn't seem to have forced her into distance. It might be an act, an extremely convincing play at being _okay,_ but Maggie doubts this. Sasha has no reason to keep up that kind of mask. She has no one to pretend for.

They all know a lot more about each other - about themselves - than they did a year ago. What they can do.

What they _will_ do.

 _Huddled in a gully, face smeared with mud, rifle between her knees. She's beginning to show, beginning to feel her own body differently. The idea of leaving the fight has never crossed her mind and it isn't now, but she looks at Rick beside her, his blue ice-chip eyes, and she whispers_ I never thought I'd be a soldier.

_Never thought I'd go to war._

“Whatever you need.” Sasha sends her the tiniest smile, faint as her frown was, and Maggie finds herself returning it, and it doesn't feel completely forced. Nothing about this is comfortable, but just like Sasha doesn't have anyone to pretend for, neither does she. No one is expecting her to be okay. No one is expecting her to have gotten over what happened.

Sure as shit no one is expecting her to get over how it all ended.

 _You need to ease up on yourself._ They were in bed when he said it, before they knew about the baby, before a lot of things happened. Her head was on his bare chest and his heartbeat was steady and calm in her ear, nothing between it and her but his skin and bone. He combed his hand through her hair, and when he spoke again she could hear his smile. Could feel it soaking through her like light. _I can't be the only one being nice to you all the time. That's a lot to put on me. Ease up on_ me, _then, if you can't do it for you._

He's not around to ease up on. She’s never going to have to worry about that again. So.

“Thanks,” she says, and she means it.

And this road, unlike the one in her dream, does have an end.

~

She helped rebuild so much of this place, yet so much of it feels alien to her now.

The gates are the first thing, of course. They're a lot like they were, before they came crashing down, but no one was trying to make them identical to their predecessors, so they're not. The buildings she sees beyond them - all white and brick and cheerful in the mid-morning sun, but the white isn't as white as it used to be, there are a lot of obvious patch jobs, and here and there the scorch marks of that final awful assault are visible on walls and eaves.

 _The_ Wall. The names replaced along with what they were written on. So many added to their number.

Her attention is captured and held so strongly by the _things_ in the Zone that she misses the _people._ The ones moving around in the distance, sure, going to and from whatever it is they do now, but also the ones closer to the entrance. Tara waving and Eugene next to her, holding a small crate of what has to be fresh ammunition. Aaron with a pack on his back, clearly on his way out but stopped to greet her.

Rick.

He's standing in the center of the wide entrance drive, arms crossed over his chest. In another context it would look like wariness, as if he's awaiting the arrival of someone he doesn't entirely trust or welcome, but she knows it's not that. He stands with his arms crossed now because he stands that way a lot these days - not because he's trying to hide what was done to him but because it still seems to confuse his body, unbalance him, making him unsure of what to do with himself. So when she opens the door and climbs out he's smiling and coming toward her, arms unfolding as she instinctively opens hers, and she can feel in his stance how hugging her is steadying him.

Despite the subtly strange feeling of only one hand on her back.

She's wondering what he’ll say, when he pulls back enough to look at her and say anything. _We missed you,_ taking a page from Sasha’s book, or _it’s been too long,_ reproaching her by implication though without meaning to. But he doesn't say either of those things, looking her quickly up and down with eyes just as blue and just as icy, even as his smile is deeply warm.

“It's good to see you,” he says softly, and there's a roughness to the edges of his voice that clenches her throat inside itself. Abruptly she wants to say she's sorry, and that would just make this all so much more uncomfortable. “It's real good.”

“Yeah.” She looks down, looks away, awkwardly shoulders herself free from the circle of his arms and steps back. He lowers them, and though she's not staring - none of them stare, none of them have _ever_ stared, because _no one_ is in one piece anymore - something twists in her gut when her gaze passes over the place where his right hand should be.

Where it's not.

“How long’re you here for?”

“Just till tonight.” She nods over her shoulder at where Aaron is helping Sasha unload the trunk. “Takin’ the car back with me.”

His eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Alone?”

“Yeah, alone.” She doesn't mean to snap. For the most part she doesn't. It's not something she _should_ snap at; it's a perfectly fair question. People _do_ travel alone, but even now it's not advisable and everyone knows it.

“Right.” His mouth is tight but he would never make a thing out of it. Not now. “Stay for dinner, at least. We got-” He cuts himself off. Something has obviously occurred to him. “Actually, you might have company goin’ back anyway. Not in the car, but.”

She tilts her head. “How come?”

But before she even asks the question, she already knows.

~

So this is why.

This is all of why. Or maybe not all, but it's by far the better part. They all _know_ it, too, and none of them have tried to come along with her. They let her go, with no fanfare and no indication in how they looked at or spoke to her that anything in particular was going on at all. There was an ease in how they pulled it off, a naturalness - which isn't in the least surprising. You learn, in this next world. You learn how to make space. How to hold someone up without ever touching them. How to care without caring.

You learn how to be still.

She's still now. She's very still, standing and looking at this garden that's so much larger than it should be, so deep, row on row. Flowers, carefully planted and faithfully tended. Pale pink roses along the wall. Deeper pink hibiscus. Red bee balm, purple aster. She doesn't know whose idea it was, but she's glad - on some wrenched level - that someone did, because otherwise this would be nothing but wooden crosses and mounds of plain grass, so fucking _many_ of them, and she doesn't know if she could look at that and not fall apart.

The flowers soften it. Yet they also feel like a kind of lie.

She briefly closes her eyes and pulls in a shaky breath, hands fisted at her sides. He hasn't seen her yet, hasn't heard her - or he hasn't let on that he has. He's crouched, battered cigarette pinched between his forefinger and thumb, his head low between his hunched shoulders and his face invisible. She doesn't have to read the name on the cross to know whose grave it is.

_Denise._

He dug it. In fact he's dug a lot of these. Somehow that was always a job he did, even back at the prison, and that's something for which she actually doesn't know the reason. But this one was different for him. She wasn't there, didn't see, but she can imagine.

His hands and his face. Like wood, she thinks. Not like stone but like something out of a fairy tale, a man cursed with an enchanted tree growing up around and inside him. Knots, eyes, bark warped into the optical illusion of human features twisted into a permanently pained grimace.

He's _still_ when that happens. He doesn't scream. He doesn't hit or break things. He's just very, very still, and when he escaped and came back and was no longer screaming and breaking things, and merely enclosed himself in that stillness, it was so much worse.

He's not like that now. She can tell without having to see all of him. But he's here, and she doesn't know what to make of that.

She actually doesn't know how often he comes here at all.

“Daryl.”

Low, soft. But he jerks his head up like he's been slapped, and it's clear that he was indeed unaware of her. That's disturbing, somehow. She shouldn't be able to sneak up on him that way.

But the rules don't apply here. He's lost himself in a way he never does with the baby.

_Come back._

She doesn't say his name again. She doesn't say anything. _He_ doesn't say anything, just rocks back on his heels and stares at her, and she can see his eyes now, and they glisten wet as they track her every tiny movement. Inside her, a voice she can't identify is whispering that she should go. Leave him here, alone, like he certainly thought he was and like he almost certainly wants to be.

And yet.

She's here for her own reasons, and before she had any idea he was here, those reasons were enough. They still are. The grave she came for is not the one he's crouched over. The garden is big enough for both of them.

But when she starts forward, without a second’s additional hesitation, it's him she's walking toward. And she's not in the least surprised.


	3. where the dead men lost their bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this isn't the happiest thing, but I hope it might help people feel a little better anyway. ❤️

 

> _I listen_   _to the water_  
>  _on nights I drink away_  
>  _and the sadness becomes so great_  
>  _I hear it in my clock_  
>  _it becomes knobs upon my dresser_  
>  _it becomes paper on the floor_  
>  _it becomes a shoehorn_  
>  _a laundry ticket_  
>  _it becomes_  
>  _cigarette smoke_  
>  _climbing a chapel of dark vines. . ._  
>  _it matters little_  
>  _very little love is not so bad_  
>  _or very little life_  
>  _what counts_  
>  _is waiting on walls_  
>  _I was born for this_  
>  _I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead._
> 
> \- Charles Bukowski, "Consummation of Grief"

 

She stops in front of him, and for a long moment she maintains the silence.

Or she neglects to break it. He doesn't break it either. She stands and he crouches, her gazing down and him staring up, his head tilted back just enough to reveal more than his left eye - which is most of what she sees a lot of the time. Both eyes now, and as the sun hits them she notices - in a way that pierces her oddly - the clarity of their pale blue, the sharpness. How present he is in the world, even if he's not easy in it. Present but removed, _in_ it but not _of_ it.

Like looking in a goddamn mirror.

He's also been crying. She wasn't imagining the glisten. Not hard; his eyes are all that's damp, and he's not wiping at his face. But she also wonders if that's because he doesn't feel that it's necessary to hide it from her, his grief for this woman. How it hasn't faded. How it still stabs at him, relentless.

She didn't know Denise very well. But she saw enough of the two of them - what little there was, before Denise was gone. It didn't surprise her; it was part of a trend, and the trend has continued. There's also Aaron, the things she suspects about Jesus, though that's not her business. There's simply something about Daryl that pulls him toward the other people who don't quite fit in the world. The strangers. The peripherals.

The weird humor of this backwoods Georgia _redneck_ forming friendships with the gay inhabitants of these communities hasn't escaped her. Now and then it's made her smile.

Hard to feel that humor now, though, looking at him. She should say something to him instead of gawking at him like this. He's sure as hell not going to be the first one to speak. He never is.

The breeze changes direction, and the heady scent of the roses passes over them.

“I didn't know you were here,” she says, and it doesn't feel like the total wrong thing to say.

He shrugs, still not getting up, his fingers pulling absently at each other. “Swung by. Was comin’ back tonight.” Which he had indicated, though unlike most of the others, he hardly ever provides an estimated time of return, at least not anymore. He goes when he wants to and he comes back when he wants to, and she's never tried to make him do anything else.

He pauses, then clears his throat and scratches at his chin. “Didn't know _you’d_ be here,” he mutters, and he's not quite looking at her.

Absurdly, she wants to laugh. The beginnings of it, fluttering in her chest, aren't totally comfortable. There's an awkwardness here that goes beyond mere awkwardness, and which she can't use their surroundings to explain to her full satisfaction.

Instead she offers her own shrug. “It's been a while.” And just like he wasn't meeting her eyes, she isn't letting her own eyes stray toward it now - close to the wall, near the roses, a glass vase containing a fresh bunch of Black-eyed Susans leaning against the wooden cross, bright enough to glow even in the periphery of her vision.

Every time she's come here - the few times - there have been fresh flowers. Someone must tend his grave almost every day. She doesn't know who. She hasn't asked. It's guilt. She won't pretend it's not.

She should be here. She should be the one.

_Telling herself over and over, alone in her cold bed in the dead hours of the night, that he wouldn't blame her. That he wouldn't be disappointed in her. That he would understand. She had to get up and go to war._

_Sometimes in those dead hours she wonders if she ever came home._

Daryl nods and tips his head back down, hair hanging in his eyes and his hands loose between his knees. A few more seconds like that, and he grunts and pushes up to stand. At first his shoulders are slumped, but he squares them, raises his face to her, and his eyes are dry. “You stayin’ over?”

“Nah.” She shakes her head, as if the point needs emphasis. “Headin’ back after dinner. I don't wanna leave Hershel alone.”

“I'm goin’ with you,” he says. It's not a question, but it's also not a statement. It lies somewhere between the two, and she recognizes that he's really laying it down in front of her, giving her the choice of which she wants it to be. It only makes sense for him to go back with her, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to assume, but he won't assume it. He never assumes anything. Never takes any of it for granted.

They all know better than that.

She nods. Nothing else was ever on the table.

“Alright.”

For another moment he merely stands there, looking at her and not looking at her, and all at once she finds it difficult to look anywhere else but at him. It's something about the quality of the light, about how it's catching his hair - for a long time now it's been practically black, but like this, the sun is combing out browns and reds and even deep blonds. It throws her back to those first days on the farm: this weird prickly asshole with the crossbow and the temper as quick and sharp as his bolts and his own camp up on the hill, which always made her think of a half feral dog that smells meat and secretly longs for company but won't do more than dart in, grab whatever scraps are tossed to it, and dart back out to the edge of the firelight and the border of the shadows.

And there's more than a little gray scattered in among those other colors. His beard went mostly gray a while back, and now it's spreading.

The urge sweeps over her to reach out and carefully push his hair out of his face, once again reveal those clear eyes.

He clears his throat, steps aside and around her before she can do or say anything else. “I'll see you,” he mutters, and when she turns he doesn't glance back. He simply walks away, head down and hands stuffed in his pockets, and it's possible that he's walking a bit faster than he really needs to be.

She briefly considers calling to him, calling him back. She knows, in a surge of intuition, why he's leaving her now. It's respect, giving her the space to be with what remains of her husband and to do and say whatever she came here to do and say, but that's not all. There's something deeper, something blackened and gnarled like a lightning-struck tree - a tree again, always with him it's growing life in the midst of death, even if the life doesn't grow easily - and the thing about the set of his shoulders, she realizes, is that he looks as if he's bracing himself for a blow.

Not that he's actually expecting one. But his body remembers.

_Halting tones, head so low his face was completely invisible. She came to him as he was keeping watch close to the gate; she was too pregnant by then to sleep comfortably a lot of the time and something drew her out of the house and then drew her to him. No memory of what conversation led to it. No memory of why he suddenly broke open to her that way - the most he's ever opened, the most he's ever told her about his term of imprisonment. Only the memory that he did tell her, saying it as if he needed to say it, as if he was making some kind of confession._

_That they threw the photo into his cell. Forced him to look._

Unspoken: _Forced him to look at what he did._

He can't be here with her, while she's here with Glenn. He can't stand before the two of them. It hurts him too much.

She's dimly aware that she's pressing her closed fist against her mouth, her teeth digging painfully into her knuckles. Times like this, she feels her own failings so keenly, her own weaknesses. What she can't do, what she never really could. Him in the distance, striding away, too late to stop him. And stopping him would hurt him worse.

Hurt her.

She's not Beth. She's not Glenn. Either of them would have handled this so much better. Either of them would have known what to say.

She's just Maggie Greene, and she's doing what she has to do. She's doing the only thing she can do.

She turns away, hands falling to her sides, and goes to see her husband.

~

He's not at dinner. It doesn't surprise her; she didn’t honestly expect him to be. But there's a twinge of disappointment somewhere beneath her diaphragm as she sits down at Rick’s table, Carl on her left and Michonne across from her, and Sasha. Rick at the head of the table like a goddamn Biblical patriarch - but she doubts that's intentional on his part. In truth, she suspects that he would be mortified by the comparison.

Though it's not such a bad one, as comparisons go, she thinks as she passes the mashed potatoes. Weathered, beaten man, been through twelve kinds of hell, made sacrifice after sacrifice and compromise after compromise, leading a motley tribe through the wilderness to an illusory Promised Land. Rick has come down off his share of mountaintops, parted his share of seas. He's not particularly special for all of that, but it's true.

His beard has gone heavily silver-gray too, his hair on the way. Sometimes - and she’ll never tell this to anyone - he almost reminds her of her father.

The parts of him that are still human.

There isn't a whole lot of talk, and that's fine with her. There isn’t much that she cares to talk about. How things are going at the Hilltop - rebuilding, trading, getting a jump on stores for a winter the harshness of which no one can predict, so might as well assume the worst. A few of the former inhabitants of Sanctuary are facing a rougher transition than expected, though for the most part they're trying. Rick says his people are facing the same. They're all traumatized. They were living in a nightmare world, a place where the rules were twisted and mutilated and the logic was upside-down. When the first ones moved in, Maggie thought of refugees from some massively oppressive regime, closed off from the outside world. North Korea. The old Soviet Union. Freedom is sometimes a mixed blessing.

This she knows.

She eats, and she attempts to ignore the way Rick is looking at her when he thinks he can do so unobtrusively, searching and studying her. She attempts to ignore the marked absence of his hand, because when she allows herself to focus on it, she _really_ thinks of her father and that's unbearable.

It was done to him very late in the war. It happened very shortly before the whole thing was sharply and violently over. After that, she was at the Hilltop most of the time. She hasn't had the chance to get used to it the way the rest of them have.

She eats and it's almost mechanical. She eats and she barely tastes it, though she can tell that it's good. Venison, and she knows without having to ask that Daryl brought it in. She finishes before the rest of them, but she doesn't get up from the table; it would feel strange, stranger than it feels to remain with an empty plate in front of her, and also discourteous in a way she was raised never to be. Daddy raised his girls with good manners. The end of the world shouldn't change that.

But then it's over, and she's getting up and leaving.

Goodbyes are brief. She doesn't like them; never has. Hugs on the porch. Promises to come back soon. She even means them, mostly, though she knows that she’ll mean them a lot less the second she drives through the gates, and less every mile home, and by the time she steps through her own door she won't mean them at all. It's not a decision; it's just how it is.

Rick offers to walk her to the car. She puts him off, gentle but firm, and he doesn't push. She half expects him to, but there must be something in her face that backs him down. Good; that's not an argument she wanted to have.

She doesn't want to have any arguments at all.

She walks away down the dimly-lit street toward the gate and the car. But a little over two thirds of the way there, she veers off around a corner and toward a plain building that used to be and is clearly no longer a house, a thin and patchy lawn between it and the sidewalk and a long flight of stairs leading up to the former front door. She's not making for that door, but instead for a smaller one to the side of the steps. She's not expecting there to be a guard, and there isn't one. She's not expecting the door to be locked, and it isn't. She lays her hand on the cool metal off the doorknob-

And hesitates.

This is not what she came for. It's not, and she shouldn't be doing it. No good can come of it. Nothing will be accomplished. Nothing will be changed, and it sure as hell won't help her sleep any better tonight. But since she left the graveyard it’s been tugging at her, faint but inexorable, and now she's here and she knows she can't go back.

She turns the handle, and as the door swings open with a soft creak, she goes inside and shuts it behind her.

Short, dim hallway. Two doors closed on either side. Once this was someone’s finished basement. Now, the door to her right is an armory, and by this point it's stocked well enough to arm a good-sized militia. But that's not her destination. She doesn't need guns. She has her own at her hip and it serves her perfectly well.

Instead she turns left, and this door is silent when she opens it. She reaches beside her and feels for the light switch, flips it on and stares, blinking owlishly.

The room is empty and unfurnished, the walls a dingy white and the floor eggshell linoleum. It's a cold room, an unwelcoming room, and it's meant to be so. No one ever _wants_ to come in here. She doubts that hardly anyone ever does; they would have no reason to. Yet they all decided that this room should exist, because they quite simply couldn't afford to forget. They couldn't afford to become complacent. They needed a memorial to evil - a _shrine_ to it. Even if no one comes, everyone knows it exists, and that might be enough.

Hanging on the wall, handle up and barbed head pointed toward the floor, is the thing that murdered Glenn Rhee.

No one cleaned it. Not just because no one wanted to even _touch_ the thing; cleaning the blood and chunks of scalp and hair off the wire would be washing off the truth. It killed Abe and it killed Glenn and it didn't stop at them. Lucille was thirsty, the monster said, and in those months of war she drank long and deep.

Until she drank one last time.

Maggie stares at it. She stares until her eyes are dry and prickling, then watering and drowning the world in a painful blur, and yet still she stares. She can't stop. She can't stop thinking of the terrible weight of it in her hands, her fingers curled around it and her muscles seeming to strain as she raised it. She can't stop thinking about the dead silence all around her, and how she was sure she was screaming until she understood that she was silent as the rest of them.

Silent with her screams clawing at the walls of her throat.

It's not that she thinks she did the right thing. She believes that there _was_ no right thing, that there never truly has been. She didn't do the right thing. That's not what it was.

She did the only thing she could do.

~

He's standing there when she walks out.

Leaning against a tree, half in shadow, cigarette loose between his fingers. He looks at her with his eyes lost in that shadow, his cheeks and nose cast in a dull orange glow as he takes a long drag and breathes smoke into the cool night air.

He doesn't ask. Doesn't speak at all. He knows exactly where she was, and exactly why she was there. He has nothing at all to say about it. It simply is. And of all the people she knows, here and at the Hilltop and making a life in Ezekiel’s Kingdom, he's very likely the only one who can fully understand.

When she did what she did, he was the only one who didn't turn away in the end. He didn't close his eyes. Didn't flinch. Didn't _blink_.

He watched.

He takes one final drag, drops the cigarette on the pavement and crushes it out with his heel. Inclines his head in the direction of the gate. The car. His bike.

She nods and follows him without a word.

~

  
All along the dark road, he leads her home, his headlight shining out in front of them like a beam of captured sunshine.

She's glad he's there.

~

When he walks with her up to the door, she thinks he might be coming inside to see Hershel, but at the door itself he pauses, and she realizes that he isn't.

She still can't see his eyes, at least not clearly. But she can see the glitter of them, hidden behind the curtain of his hair like distant stars. Again, very suddenly, she wants to brush his hair aside and unveil them, look into them and know what he's thinking.

That's stupid. She wouldn't know, no matter how well she could see him. In some ways he's awful at hiding what's going on inside him. In other ways he's capable of keeping himself a complete mystery. She long ago gave up any thought of trying to chip that wall away. She doesn't even genuinely want to. He has his privacy. She should respect it.

 _Are you sure that's what_ he _wants?_

“You gonna be alright?” He asks the question in a low murmur, and it's rough but there's a deep gentleness under it, very much like how he sounds when he's speaking to Hershel. An attentiveness, too. He's not just tossing the words at her. He honestly wants to know.

She nods, ducks her head and gives him a faint smile. It must look tired. She _is_ tired. “You?”

He grunts, which she takes for an affirmative. She nods again, and as she does, one of her too-long strands of hair falls across her face, into her eyes. She's instinctively reaching up to tuck it back-

And he gets there before she does.

It's just a second. Just a brush of his fingertip across her cheek as he lifts her hair aside, the pad of his finger as rough as his voice - and as gentle. It's nothing, it really should be _nothing,_ but a fine little shiver runs through her, and his hand is gone and he's stepping back from her, unease flitting across the parts of his face that she can see. For the briefest of moments, he looks like he might actually be about to apologize.

But he doesn't. He doesn't say anything at all. He turns from her, and as he did at the graveyard he walks swiftly away from her, long strides, head down.

Too much like he's fleeing from something.

She pulls in a long, trembling breath and closes her eyes. After another moment or two she goes inside, takes Hershel from Rosita and feeds him, puts him to bed, climbs in bed herself. And for a while she sleeps, but in those dead hours she finds herself awake once more, gazing up at nothing, her cold fingers clutching at the covers. Telling herself that he wouldn't be disappointed in her. Begging his forgiveness.

But she's no longer certain what for.


	4. take time to thrive my ray of hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note about canon: I'm clearly sliding in plot details where I can, but I'm also flying mostly blind regarding what's going to happen on the show in the future, so I guess it makes sense to consider this semi-divergence. I mean, obviously. 
> 
> ❤️

 

> _I wanted_  
>  _the past to go away, I wanted_  
>  _to leave it, like another country; I wanted_  
>  _my life to close, and open_  
>  _like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song_  
>  _where it falls_  
>  _down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;_  
>  _I wanted_  
>  _to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,_  
>  _whoever I was, I was_
> 
> _alive  
>  for a little while._
> 
> \- Mary Oliver, "Dogfish"

 

But she closes her eyes, and when she opens them again he's there.

She can't see his face. She doesn't need to. She knows that form, that body, standing silhouetted in the moonlight flowing in through the window. The outlines of his shoulders, arms, his sides until his lower body melts into the shadows. Lean and strong; he looked slight when she first met him, even skinny, but she found out very early how powerful he could be, her in his arms and curled into him, beneath him, simply standing beside him with his hand resting on her back. Her back and how she discovered he could work loose even the most stubborn knots in her muscles with his nimble, talented fingers. Nimble as he was. Quick and clever. Not just her back but all of her, arms and legs, her feet, her own hands, and her cunt too, inside her and coaxing free her orgasm, and holding her tight as she shuddered.

Strong. Always strong.

He's naked, and the lines and curves of him are smoothly, clearly defined. She can almost feel them under her hands. She would know his body blind. She pushes up on one hand and a soft breeze pushes in cool through the gap the slightly raised window allows, and goosebumps ripple up and down her bare arms and seem to coalesce into her throat, blocking her voice. Her breath.

She needs to see his face. She needs to know what he's feeling when he looks at her now.

It doesn't matter that this isn't real.

His name. She needs to say it. It's beating at the inside of her blocked throat, pounding, screaming itself against her numb vocal cords. If she doesn't say it, maybe he'll think she forgot it. _Maybe he'll think she forgot about him._ There's no saying she's sorry for that, no forgiving or absolving it, not _ever,_ and as her hands twitch mindlessly in the folds of the sheet and her lips begin to quiver, panic rides in behind those uncontrolled muscles, and his name is shoved aside by that building scream-

He's stepping forward. He's reaching out for her, and although she still can't see his face, as always she can hear his smile when he speaks. That smile, the sweet curve of which she knows by heart - under her fingertips, on her skin, against her lips.

Glenn Rhee never faked a smile in his too-short life.

_It's okay, Maggie. You're okay._

_God, I’m so proud of you._

She finally manages a tiny, weak whimper, the syllable of his name, straining to reach back. She wants him so bad, as bad as the air she can barely manage to haul into her burning lungs. But she's terrified, because _what if,_ when the light finally falls across his face, it's a gory horror, one eye grotesquely bulging and his ruined scalp pouring blood. Obscene, the way she never wanted to remember him, the way she _refuses_ to remember him. Even seeing him that way would surely be a sin against him.

And isn't she sinning enough?

_I love you so much, Maggie. I wish you would stop this. It's stupid. It's stupid, and you don't deserve it._

God. She can't. She can't get out from under it, can't wriggle free. It's like a bat crashing down on her over and over, and she gets up and goes to war even though the war is over, and every second she fights to remember him exactly as she should, but _fuck,_ she's so afraid that she's losing.

Her name again. But it's not right. It's not quite his voice anymore. It's low and rough, heavy, and his form isn't what it was - he's bigger and broader, and the sheen of his bare skin is fading into worn clothing. Longer hair hanging around his face. It's not _him_ at all, and fresh new terror drowns the awful yearning and the despair.

Almost makes it better.

He's reached her and stopped. He's standing by the bed, staring down at her, and she wordlessly stares back, pulling in her shallow, uneven breaths. She's thinking about nightmares, dimly aware that this could and very likely is becoming one, but then - silent as the house - he turns and sinks down onto the bed beside her, bent, swiveling his upper body at the waist. She can't make out his eyes, but they're there and their gaze is on her; she can feel it like the pressure of his fingers as he lifts a hand and touches her face.

And she's pressing into that touch. The warmth of it, and roughness to equal his voice. So familiar.

Safe.

_Maggie,_ he repeats in a whisper, and that's when she hears the pain. It's running through like infected veins, dark and sick even if they're some distance under the skin; he’s just so _sad,_ sad enough to crack her heart, and it stabs into her with all the neat restraint of an ice pick. She can't help him, she knows this, but all at once she's raising her arm, sensation abruptly returned to her extremities, and she's taking hold of his wrist, turning her head into it, pressing her lips to the center of his palm, and he shivers and sighs.

_It's okay._ Muffled, but she's certain he hears and understands. _It’s okay, Daryl. He loved you._

_Him and her. They both did. Nothing ever could have changed that._

He leans in - almost seems to fall - and his forehead comes to rest against hers. His tears are trickling down the back of her hand, just as hers begin to flow.

~

Morning, early, bright, the sun spilling over the honey-colored wood of the floor. She stands at her bedroom window, looking at the wide central stretch of ground below. People are moving around, to and from the gardens and the barns and the new scrap-smithy, and one young girl is leading a couple of cows out to the carefully enclosed pasture they use, another older girl accompanying her with a rifle over one shoulder. Her robe is open and Hershel is half asleep at her breast, his tiny mouth still latched onto her nipple but starting to loosen as his eyelids slip downward. He was crying, and she came awake much too fast, but he's calm now and she's calmer. He's a perfect little weight in her arms, soothing in himself. She rocks him gently, hums some tune to which she can't immediately remember the words - though after a few seconds she remembers, and without meaning to, she's singing.

Not her mother, singing it to her. Daddy.

_October winds lament_  
_around the castle of Dromore_  
_yet peace is in her lofty halls_  
_my loving treasure store_  
_though autumn leaves may droop and die_  
_a bud of spring are you_  
_Sing hushabye loo, low loo, low lan_  
_Sing hushabye loo, low loo_

_take heed, young eaglet, till thy wings_  
_are feathered fit to soar_  
_a little rest and then_  
_the world is full of work to do_  
_a little rest and then_  
_the world is full of work to do_  
_Sing hushabye loo, low loo, low lan_  
_Sing hushabye loo, low loo_

“I love you, sweetheart,” she whispers, and kisses the top of his head. Downy hair and already a lot of it, darker than hers. His eyes are so large when they're open, that almond shape she knows so well, and green. She can tell that it's going to hurt to look at him, and it's going to hurt more every year he gets older, and she wants it to. She wants to live to see it, live to be hurt by it. One thing at least that she never doubted, not even in that clearing when she first dragged herself to her feet. She wanted to live. She wanted to live as much as she ever had.

She has to live. For him.

Voice coming to her, faint; she recognizes it as a memory, and not as an old one. Last night? She barely remembers, but she thinks so. She squeezes her eyes closed as her chest hitches.

_It's okay, Maggie. You're okay. God, I’m so proud of you._

Knock on the door. Normally she might have asked for a minute, covered up out of habit if nothing else, but she’s drifting in those words and the blurry flicker of his form in the dark, and she turns and murmurs “Come in” without raising her head. The door creaks, and a familiar gravelly voice starts to say her name-

And stops dead.

Her eyes snap open and she looks up, her eyes widening, already knowing what she's going to see. Daryl standing in the doorway, crossbow slung over his shoulder and his hand still on the knob, staring at her. She's not exactly _naked,_ but she's also not _dressed_ by anyone's standard - _not decent,_ Daddy would have said, and she fights back a vaguely hysterical giggle, because what does that even mean anymore - and Hershel’s head is obscuring most of one breast but the other is bare, swollen nipple visible just above the fold of her robe.

He blinks. She blinks back at him, whatever words she might have scrounged together dead on arrival in her mouth. Then he's drawing a shaky breath and looking down, away, anywhere but at her, taking a step backward and generally appearing ready to flee. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Fuck, I'm… I'm sorry.”

Her hand is shaking as much as his inhalation as she reaches up to tug her robe up over her exposed breast, but when she speaks, she's pleased with how steady her voice is. “It's fine.” She gives him a crooked smile that she's certain he doesn't see. “Used to live just about on top of each other, right? It’s not like it's a big deal.”

Indeed, it shouldn't be. At one point or another, most of them have seen more of everyone else than they would have in the normal course of things. Privacy was a fabulous luxury. She knows that when she and Glenn curled up in their blankets at the edge or in a corner of wherever they happened to be sheltering and fucked as quickly and quietly as they could, everyone was perfectly aware of what was going on and politely pretended not to be. She doesn't know for a fact that Daryl has seen her half naked - or _all_ naked - before, but she would bet he has.

Except would she? Has he?

It abruptly occurs to her that she's never seen _him_.

He ducks his head, sort of a nod, but he's still not looking at her, and she sighs. He's _Daryl_. It doesn't matter whether or not he was at fault. It doesn't matter whether or not there _was_ a fault. He’ll find a way to make there be one, and he’ll find a way to make it his.

Now he's spooked. She makes sure her voice is gentle. “Did you wanna talk to me?”

“Goin’ up Kingdom-way,” he says, maintaining his rough, barely audible volume. “Me’n Jesus. Figured I'd see if you wanted somethin’.” He pauses, hand tightening on the strap of his bow. “Anythin’ special. For the baby. Y’know. Or whatever.”

The awkwardness is painful to listen to, and for a fraction of a second what she wants is to charge forward and seize him by that strap and shake him. Because it's bleeding into _her,_ making her stomach twist, and that's not fair.

Instead she speaks again, low, and what she says is unexpected. “You just got back last night.”

He shrugs. Says nothing.

“You should stay another day or two. Rest up.”

“‘m fine. Can rest up on that end.”

_But you're here right now,_ she almost shoots back, and bites her lip. She's never done this before. She's never tried to make him stay. She's always been so careful to keep out of this part of it for him, because she saw what he was like when he made it back from the Sanctuary, the way he constantly paced and seemed deeply uncomfortable in any confined space even if it wasn't small, a kind of claustrophobia that went far beyond the conventional. It's better now, and trying to get him to stay a little longer in one place or the other isn't exactly locking him up in a dark cell, but she's still kept her hands off him. Let him roam free.

Yet now she wants him to stay. Wants, isn't sure why - and she knows that if she straight-up asked him to stay, he would.

And he wouldn't want to. He would do it for her, because she suspects he might do a lot of things for her, but he wouldn't _want_ it. He wouldn't like it.

She can't.

“Alright,” she says softly, and glances down at Hershel. He's out cold, breathing those deep sleeping-baby breaths that dance along the edge of snores, and the air is cool across her damp areola, tightening it uncomfortably. She shifts him higher and closer, covering herself, and he doesn't stir. “I guess… I can't really think of anythin’.”

He nods again, finally lifting his eyes to meet hers, and beneath the lingering nervousness, he looks almost… disappointed. As if that wasn't the answer he was hoping to hear. “Back in a couple days, then.”

He turns away, pulling the door closed behind him, but something leaps in her and up and out her throat before she can stop it. As if she even wanted to. Which she's not positive about.

“Pomegranates.”

He halts and looks back over his shoulder, brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“You wanted to know if you could get somethin’ for me. The pomegranates they got there, we ran out a while back. Get me some more?”

He doesn't immediately answer, and for a few seconds she wonders if maybe she's overstepped some line she wasn't aware of. But then he gives her another duck of his head, a nod. Leaves without another word.

Before she loses sight of his face, she could swear she catches a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. As small as his smiles ever are, but there. And she realizes: it’s possible that she just now made him happy.

Why that ties her diaphragm into a knot is more than she cares to comprehend.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Maggie sings is "The Castle of Dromore", an Irish lullaby. A very nice version is [here. ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pmMz-IESB-s)


	5. it's too late to call back yesterday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must say, I'm so pleased with the reaction to this. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and it's going in some directions I didn't anticipate, and it's very interesting to write it as events are unfolding on the show, seeing where my interpretation diverges from canon and where it lines up. 
> 
> But it's twice as fun because you're along for the ride, so thank you. ❤️

 

> _Every morning the maple leaves._  
>  _Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts_  
>  _from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big_  
>  _and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out_  
>  You will be alone always and then you will die.  
>  _So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog_  
>  _of non-definitive acts,_  
>  _something other than the desperation._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out"

 

The seed explodes in her mouth like a tart-sweet red star.

There's a trick to eating pomegranate seeds, she’s discovered. There's no difficulty to be overcome, and it's not something that she thinks would work for everyone, but it does for her, and extremely well. You begin by taking a seed - a single one, carefully selected - and you set it onto your tongue. You hold it in place, and you press it against the roof of your mouth, rub it back and forth - feel the smooth texture, the cool flesh soaking up your heat, inhale its tangy scent past the barrier of your soft palate. You press it between your front teeth and test it, feel its skin tight with juice, stretched fit to burst, and then you bite and it does burst, and all that sweetness flows out and into you.

It takes her longer to eat a pomegranate than most people.

For a while she wasn't doing much in the way of serious physical work, and she sure as hell wasn't going on runs; Carson insisted and she grudgingly acquiesced. But lately she's been easing back into it - which is good, because she was starting to lose her fucking mind. She turns out to have a knack for organization and diplomacy, and people tell her she possesses the qualities of a good leader and she supposes she has to accept that they might not be completely wrong, but Maggie Greene was raised a farm girl, not a goddamn mayor, and she doesn't feel quite right unless she's doing something with her hands.

Light gardening for a month or so was a stopgap. But now she's doing more, plowing and digging and pushing wheelbarrows laden with sod, and there's a fall harvest to get in. And it's good, real good, and when she's working like this she sometimes even manages to stop thinking.

For a bit.

Break time now, sitting under a maple tree near the big broccoli patch with one of the pomegranates Daryl brought her, picking out the seeds and eating them one by one. They're fleshy and swollen, gleaming red like jewels, and she asked for them on a whim but after he brought them to her, the first seed she bit into flipped a switch in her and now she can't get enough of them. It's a little like the cravings she had in the most infuriating days of her pregnancy, only not as bizarre and not as infuriating. This craving can be satisfied with a minimum of effort.

She can ask him to get her more when they run out. Or she could just go to the Kingdom her own damn self, visit with Carol, see how she and Ezekiel are doing together - weird match, that one, but what _isn't_ weird anymore - and not bother him. But she can't shake the suspicion that he _wants_ to be bothered.

Maybe she can go with him. Best of both worlds.

She's thinking about him a lot these days, and she's not completely certain what to make of it.

No need to dig too deep into it. He's a friend. He's _family,_ a good man, and he hasn't been right for a long time, and she would be some kind of cold bitch - an even colder bitch than she's had to be - if she didn't worry about him. Not that there's much she can do - not that she honestly thinks he would _let_ her do much even if she had the first clue about what might work, because he's difficult like that - but that never stopped her from worrying before.

He doesn't smile enough.

_Neither do you._

She doesn't realize that she's leaned back against the tree and slipped into a half doze, lulled by the indistinct buzz of voices and the sleepy lowing of cows, pomegranate still in her hand, until a footstep beside her startles her back to full wakefulness, and she tightens her hand around the fruit and looks up. And maybe he startled her, but she's not startled to see that it's _him,_ standing there with the sun behind him and his face, as it so often is, mostly lost in shadow, eyes curtained by his own hair. Standing there silent, the bow over his shoulder and his hand on the strap, and looking at her, and there's no way to be sure how long he's been there.

Someone else would have creeped her out, doing that. But it's his way, and he means nothing creepy by it.

He moves silently through the world.

She lifts a hand to shade her eyes, though she's partially in the shade of his own body. “Hi.”

He ducks his head, little nod of return, and through the gap in his hair she catches his gaze shift to the fruit she's holding and back up to her. “Good?”

“Yeah.” She smiles, picking at it with her thumbnail. “It's perfect.” And then, though she said it already when he first walked in with them, “Thanks.”

He grunts, looks away. He's not good with being told _thank you,_ and after a few weeks of observing him out there on the road after the farm, she came to the conclusion that it wasn't so much his lack of manners as it was that he wasn't used to the appreciation and didn't know how he was supposed to respond. Never a _you're welcome_ out of him. A grunt, a nod, shrug, nothing more. He doesn't do well in general being given something he doesn't believe he deserves, and something else she concluded was that he didn't believe he deserved a whole lot beyond the minimum needed for survival.

Which means that he feels, on a deep and perhaps even foundational level, that he owes people these things. Or not _owes,_ not exactly, but that he has to do them. _Or else what?_ She doesn't know, and she's never asked. And something she does know is that it also genuinely gives him pleasure, to do things for people he cares about. But that doesn’t change the underlying truth of it.

And he's still that way. After all this time, all they've been through together, he still is. If anything it can be worse now, though not all the time. Constant hunting, constant runs. And once or twice, in harder, uglier days, she's wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him that _no one is going to make him leave, if he stops working himself like he does._ No one is going to stop caring about him.

No one is going to blame him for anything.

And he deserves a goddamn _thank you,_ for doing these things for her. Even if the _thank you_ isn't why he does them. Even if he does them with no expectation at all.

She pats a shady spot in the grass next to her. “C’mon. Why don't you sit a spell.”

Even with the shadow and his hair, she catches the hesitation pass across his face, but it's brief, and he shrugs and lifts off the bow and leans it against the trunk, lowers himself down and sits with his knees bent and his elbows leaning on them, gazing up into the branches. The leaves aren't changing yet, but cooler days aren't too far off. Early autumn won’t stay _early_ forever.

“They're gonna turn soon,” she says quietly, trusting him to know what she means. “A couple weeks. Maybe three.”

“Sooner’n three.”

She doesn't ask for proof. She believes him, and she doesn't need to understand how he knows in order to do so.

“Good. One thing I like about bein’ up here.” She releases a sigh, tips her head back. “Fall’s prettier.”

He grunts again, rummages in his pocket for his cigarettes and shakes one out of the battered pack. While she was pregnant he wouldn't smoke any closer than about a hundred yards from her if he could help it. But he knows she doesn't mind it. “Colder.”

“Everything’s a trade.” She looks down at the pomegranate, picks out a seed and rolls it between her fingers. “Daddy always used to say that, when I'd complain about somethin’ stupid. _Good comes with bad and the other way round, ‘cause you don't get one without the other._ ”

She doesn't talk about her father much in most situations, but she hardly ever talks about him around Daryl, because she would have had to be oblivious to miss how he tenses up when she does. When anyone does. Yet another thing she doesn't fully understand, but she understands enough to want to avoid it for him - and yet she just slipped, and she instantly feels bad about it.

But if she apologized, that would just make it explicitly clear that she noticed.

“Of course,” she adds, even quieter, “what he meant was that good always comes along with bad. If you look for it.”

In the periphery of her vision, she can see that he's studying her, cigarette unlit between his fingers, and while his expression is difficult to read, he doesn't actually appear to be upset. He appears pensive. Pensive and possibly a little unhappy about it, but not shaken.

“You buy that?”

She shrugs. “I dunno.” And so she doesn't. There's some good these days, and there's some bad, but she doesn't feel totally _connected_ to any of it. It drifts past her and she watches it, is in it, but somehow it doesn't quite touch her. Sometimes it's almost dreamlike.

It's very difficult to know what to believe anymore. At least when it comes to herself.

She raises the fruit and turns it over in her hands, shooting him another quick smile. “There's pomegranates.” A few seconds’ pause, then she pops the seed into her mouth and picks out another one. “Have some.”

He shakes his head. She still can't read his face with any confidence. “Nah. I'm good.”

“C’mon. I know you like ‘em, I've seen you eatin’ ‘em.” She proffers the seed, tone coaxingly uplifted. It suddenly seems important that he take it. “I got tons. And when I run out you can get me more.”

She doesn't mean to say that, doesn't mean to say it the way she does, and she _definitely_ doesn't mean to do what she does next. It merely seems to _happen,_ her hand driven by a force beyond her comprehension or control, something she couldn't stop even if she tried - even if she had enough sense in that moment to want to. She watches, that dreamlike gauze settling over her perception, as she lifts the seed to his mouth and gently - so gently - pushes it past his lips.

She freezes. He was already frozen. Staring at her with those clear blue eyes, suddenly touched by the sunlight as a breeze shakes the leaves. It's not dreamlike anymore; it's all coming to her in a constant stream of sensory input: the soft rustle of that breeze, drone of voices like distant bees, the grass tickling her bare legs and the tree trunk pleasantly rough against her back through her shirt, strands of sweat-damp hair lying against her brow and a hint of sweet juice on her tongue, the shifting dappled light across the ground - and him, very close, the way the stiff white hair just beneath his lower lip prickles her knuckle, and the way his lips themselves are smooth, shining slightly, yielding under her fingertip.

The way they move when he accepts the seed and bites into it. The way his eyelids flutter closed for a fraction of a second, and she knows that it's because of the taste.

Then it all breaks.

She pulls her hand back. He twitches his head away. She's not looking at him, but she doesn't need to be in order to know that _he's_ not looking at _her_. At the ground. At her feet. At the broccoli patch a few yards away. At anything. Her gut is in knots, and she doesn't get it, doesn't get what that was, what she's just done, except her worry over him has flared into something that isn't too far removed from actual fear.

And she doesn't get that either.

“Should get goin’,” he mutters, pushes himself to his feet, and she finally does look up at him, fighting past a hot wave of mortification that burns up through her ears into her cheeks. _Sorry,_ she could say she's sorry, but she's not even sure what she would be apologizing for. And it would be like apologizing for mentioning her father. It would call attention to the thing. Make it worse.

Whatever it is.

So instead she nods and turns the pomegranate fitfully over and over in her hands, glances down at it, and when she raises her head again he's gone. Not even in sight, heading away. He's just vanished. If it weren't for the bent blades of grass from where he was sitting - and the cigarette, dropped and abandoned without ever having been lit - she might have half believed that he was never there at all. That she really _did_ dream it.

Like when he was in her room that night, so vivid. Coming to her, sitting down on the bed. Leaning his brow against hers and crying, silent, his tears trickling down the back of her hand when she touched him.

She touched him. Something else she's noticed, noticed since a long time ago: he doesn't like being touched. He stiffens, even if he eases immediately after. Do it too fast and he flinches. She never thought much about it other than to note the fact that she should avoid touching him unless it was necessary. But she knows now: it's not that he doesn't like it. It's that it frightens him.

It's that he's expecting something awful to happen.

She touched him, just now. Not roughly, not with more than a fingertip - and he stiffened, but she's certain, she's _positive_ she saw it: in those seconds between first contact and when he pulled away…

He eased. He opened.

He took the seed.

Even so. _I'm sorry,_ she whispers, her hand over her mouth. She drops the pomegranate into the grass. It’s only about two thirds eaten but she's not hungry anymore. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry._ Because she moved too fast. Ambushed him, regardless of how he reacted. Because she was an idiot. Because she spooked him. She chased him off.

Because she wanted, so much, for him to stay.


	6. six-feet-under getting under your skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, you who are following this; I really needed to be in the right frame of mind to write this and I simply wasn't for a while, in addition to needing to work on a couple of other things. But I do have the rest of this roughly planned out, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to finish. 
> 
> As always: ❤️

 

> _It used to be, you’d open your mouth_   
>  _And the weather changed. You’d_   
>  _Open your mouth and the sky’d spill_
> 
> _That dry, missing-someone kind of rain_   
>  _No matter the season. And it hurt_   
>  _Like a guitar hurts under the right hands._
> 
> _Like a good strong spell. Now_   
>  _You’re all song. Body gone to memory._   
>  _And guess what? It hurts_
> 
> _Harder._
> 
> ― Tracy K. Smith, "Vaya, Camarón"

 

The moonlight shivers on the ceiling like water-reflections on the wall of a cave.

She lies there and watches it, bemused. It's not supposed to be doing that; there is no water to reflect, and she can't determine the source of the moonlight. The window is dark. Everything outside is dark. No faint glow from other windows, nothing from the equally faint lights they keep near the gate. Black as it ever was in their days on the road, no illumination but their campfires and whatever the sky would give them. But she's in her bed. _Hers_.

Cold and empty and lonely.

_It was never meant to be only hers._

But it's not cold. It's warm. Warm and warming, and she stretches beneath the covers, her bare skin slipping against the sheets. Worn sheets, soft as any she had on the farm; sometimes she wakes up in the dark and she isn't certain where she is, half believes it all might turn out to be a dream and Shawn is down the hall, snoring in that way he always denied. She knows that's not true, now - knows where and what this is. But the moonlight is hypnotic, the way it warps and quivers like the gentle vibration of some steady piece of machinery.

Some enormous heart.

Warm; then the mattress dips under additional weight and the weight is over _her,_ moving slowly up her body, a dark shape in the darkness. Familiar even as a silhouette against the watery moonlight, and she gasps as her chest seizes. This is cruel, what her brain is throwing up to torment her - because this is a dream, it can't be anything else, and just as she was thinking about how this bed should never have been hers alone, it isn't anymore.

He's here with her.

His weight on her was one of the first things she learned about him, and one of the first things she learned to love. Not overly heavy; he was always slight. Careful weight, as if he was balancing, easing, looking for what was comfortable to her. She gave him shit for it those initial couple of days but the truth was that even in the beginning, even on the floor of that looted store, he was good and he was good to _her_. It was clumsy and too quick, and she was mildly exasperated and ready to get herself off with her fingers - not at all the first time she’d had to do that with a boy - but he didn't give her a chance; he nudged her hand aside and did it for her, working her in rapid circles far more confident than she would have guessed he could be, and she came shuddering and biting back her whimper with her cheek pressed against his collarbone.

It was more than she expected. It was better than she wanted to let on.

Then she stopped trying to hide it from him, and it was better still.

Like this. That weight, pinning her to the mattress as she pretended to herself that she couldn't easily flip him off her. Strong, sure hands framing her hips, lips on the soft skin between her aching breasts. Kissing up between them, gliding sideways and circling her nipple with the tip of his tongue, and when he closes his mouth on it and sucks, electricity rockets straight down her spinal column and she arches and whines. Canting her hips up, clit pounding, looking for any friction he’ll give her - his leg, hip, his cock hot and hard against the inside of her thigh, and she's groping for his shoulders and keening, just about ready to beg him. It's been so fucking _long_ and she's so _empty_.

And it hurts so bad.

Doesn't matter that this is a dream. She can't scrape together a single fuck to give.

She cries out when he enters her, lifts her legs and wraps them around his waist and bucks up to greet him with her fingers curled into his hair. Soft strands between them, soft as the sheets, his soft groan as he moves in her with long rolls of his hips. He fits inside her like he's meant to be there, her cunt a wonderfully tight sheath for him as she flexes her muscles and grips him as if she's trying to hold him in. And she is - God, _please don't go,_ not again, sobbing at the moonlight on the ceiling, the sheet fallen away from them both and leaving them gloriously exposed to that pooling light, cool against the searing heat gathering inside her. She wants to see him, _needs_ to, shoves the fear of his broken, ruined face aside, yanks his head up and back and _looks_.

Doesn't scream.

She should. It's all wrong. She should scream and wake herself up, drag herself _out_ of this, because it should be a _nightmare,_ it should flood horrified ice through her veins. It should burn her up with shame. How could she. How _could_ she.

_You know exactly how._

Instead she's reaching between them, groping, sending herself flying up and moaning over the edge and staring at him the entire fucking time. Drenched in that moonlit shame that should be consuming her. Watching him as he tenses and convulses and releases into her, teeth bared and eyes squeezed shut as if he can't bear to meet her own anymore.

Daryl Dixon comes in absolute silence.

Somehow she's not in the least surprised.

~

Awake. No moonlight on the ceiling. No moonlight anywhere. It's merely that darkness, empty and soundless again, and she's alone in it, curled on her side beneath the covers and shaking and hiding her face with her hands.

Hiding from whom?

Everything. Everyone. Herself, not that she can. Not in this moment, with the last ripples of her climax still washing through her.

_Oh no._ She mouths it against her palms, lips wet. Cheeks wet. The ends of her hair are stuck together with tears and sweat. She moves, huddles tighter into herself, the whisper of her body in the silent room and the stickiness between her legs. Oh no. _Oh no oh no oh no._

She can't undo what she did, even if it was only an act in a dream. She _did it._ She saw him and understood what was happening and she did it anyway.

And even if she manages to forget most of it in the morning, she can't unknow what she knows.

~

“I'm goin’ on a run.”

Sasha looks up from her rifle, brow furrowed, squinting in the early afternoon sun. She's cleaning the rifle on the steps of the trailer where she and Enid sleep - Maggie offered them a room in the house but they both shrugged it off, said how the house just didn't feel right, and truth be told Maggie didn't entirely disagree - and there was no preamble to this announcement, no _hi_ or _I decided somethin’._ Simply that she's going.

Largely because she hasn't planned out anything else to say.

“You sure that's a good idea?”

“It's been weeks. I'm not made outta _glass,_ Sasha, I carried a baby for nine goddamn months. I fought a war during.” She crosses her arms over her chest and feels uncomfortably on the defensive. “I can do it.”

Sasha sighs, sets the gun aside, gazes up at her. “I didn't say you couldn't do it. Christ, Maggie, I know you can _do it._ I asked you if it was a good idea.”

“Why wouldn’t it be a _good idea?_ ”

“‘cause you have that baby, and he needs you. ‘cause yeah, I do think it's kind of soon, though I know that's not my business and I'm not the doctor.” Sasha pauses a beat, gnawing at her lip. “But mostly ‘cause something’s up with you and I'm starting to worry.”

Maggie stares at her, wordless. Practically hugging herself now. She didn't prepare anything else to say; she sure as hell didn't plan for _this_. And even if she had known it was coming… What the fuck do you say to that? Snapping and storming off would be a lot easier with basically anyone else, but with Sasha the petulance in doing so is impossible to ignore.

There's no way she gets out of this looking good. Her attention is caught by the gleam of the sun on the oiled barrel, and because it's easier than facing down Sasha, she allows her eyes to stay there. “I'm fine.”

“You haven't been fine for months. But I'm not talking about that. This is new.” She leans forward, arms resting on the tops of her bent knees. “What's going on, Maggie?”

“I just.” _I don't know. I don't know and I hate it and what I hate most is that I'm pretty sure I don't know because I don't_ want _to know. I have some ideas but they're bad ones and I'm so confused and I don't fucking know._ She looks back toward the gate, open now to admit two kids and two goats. What lies beyond it. It used to be a place to escape from. Not to. “I just really need to get outta here. No, not to _visit_ anyone,” she adds, sharp. “I need to _do_ somethin’.”

Mortal danger has a way of making other problems seem unimportant. Its singular benefit.

Sasha merely looks at her for a long moment. The goats pass, bleating in a bored kind of way. Somewhere, someone breaks into a cheerful peal of laughter, and for some reason it's maddening.

Finally Sasha reaches down, picks up a cloth and begins to wipe the grease from her hands. Her tone is carefully neutral. “Why’re you even telling me this, if it isn't up for debate?”

“‘cause you're goin’ out next. I wanna come.”

Sasha shakes her head. “Not me. I'm taking a group out next week. You wanna go now, Daryl said he was heading back out tomorrow.”

_Oh_. No. No, that's not… She pulls in a breath. “I can't.”

“Huh?” Sasha frowns up at her, clear confusion pulling at her features. “Why not? If you really wanna get out there, you're probably safer with him than anyone el-”

“Ain't about safe.” She's biting the insides of her cheeks. Praying Sasha won't notice, fairly certain she will. No, she's not sure this is a good idea. She wasn't before, and she's twice as unsure now. This might be shaping up to be a pretty fucking _bad_ idea.

“Then what's it _about?_ ”

_Like you said, it’s none of your fucking business._ She almost yells it. Comes dangerously close. Screw petulant; what's gripping her chest is something horribly like fear, and anger entirely directed at herself, because she trapped herself so neatly. Backed herself into a corner she can't get out of without breaking something wide open. What _is_ it about? What _is_ the problem? Yeah, things were a little weird after that day with the pomegranate, but it was almost a week ago. It was weird. That's all. So why is Daryl unacceptable company for this? He's one of her oldest and closest friends. He's _family_. He would take a walker bite for her any day of the week, without a second’s hesitation. There's no one she trusts more.

_Why don't you want to be with him?_

Around. Why doesn't she want to be _around_ him.

Fuck it. She's _fine_.

“Nothin’.” She drops her arms to her sides, turns. “That works. I'll talk to him.”

She was never an effective liar. Not to Daddy especially, but not really to anyone, and she hasn't gotten much better with time. Beth was always the liar, and she was the best of the three of them. Sweet innocent Beth, Daddy’s Girl, who you'd look at and assume she was as pure as the driven goddamn snow. Always used her powers for good, but even so.

_Effective enough sometimes._

But it's only after she's talked to him, gotten a couple of grunts in the affirmative - if he's uneasy with the idea, he's not letting on, though he wasn't exactly meeting her eyes as he crouched by his bike and fiddled with something engine-related - settled the plans and walked away again, that she realizes that it's possible, and she's not positive but it is, that she was trying to protect him just as much as herself.

And that's as far as she's willing to go.


	7. to hold in gentle strain

 

> _no turning back, just you and me_  
>  _to weave our futures out from air_  
>  _and live in them until we wear them out_  
>  _then we'll begin anew_  
>  _immersed in dreams we never knew_  
>  _were possible; and beat despair_  
>  _back to a time that did not care_
> 
> _though when it's over, when it's done_  
>  _we'll fall through gaps that people shoved_  
>  _into our lives, and then we'll land_  
>  _still strangers in a hostile land;_
> 
> _but_  
>  _we_  
>  _can_  
>  _hope_
> 
> ― Davian Aw, "it might not get better"

 

She doesn't take the car this time. It's not something on which she expends a lot of thought; it just doesn't seem prudent, with only her and Daryl going out, not simply because of room but also because the cars they have, while good for big hauls, are cumbersome and difficult to get around blocks in the road. Every time they have to stop to clear one is a period during which they're vulnerable. Better to travel light and nimble when you can, and they're not in the market for anything especially big. If they find something good that they can't fit in their packs or on the back of the bike, they can hide it and flag it for later retrieval.

So it's him and it's her, and the bike. And as she climbs on behind him, and Jesus and one of the ex-Saviors pull the gate open, it hits her how natural this feels. Her hands on his broad shoulders, settling her center of gravity - it's been a while since she's done this, and it's not the same bike, and really _everything_ is different now, but she recalls the first time, going after formula for Judith, the single-minded determination she saw in him then and how it had been beyond even what little she saw during his fierce hunting for Sophia.

He was out to save someone, and he was going to _get it right this time._ And the equally fierce happiness when he did exactly that.

First time she really saw who he was.

So when she saw him after Atlanta, even out of the depths of her own agony… She’s wondered, since then - although she never has and never would tell this to anyone - how well anyone else understood what was happening to him. Not simply _that_ it destroyed him, but _why_.

It's not as if it matters now.

The gate grinds open. She holds tighter to him. She already felt stable, but he's additionally stabilizing. She holds on and she feels even more certain that she won't fall.

She feels safe.

He doesn't glance back at her, doesn't ask her if she's ready. He doesn't have to. He coaxes the engine to a roar and takes them through, and she doesn't look back either.

~

It's early morning, clear, not yet bright but with the promise of brightness. She dressed for the cool, densely woven jeans and a jacket, but as Daryl swings onto a long stretch of totally open road and finds greater speed, the breeze combs her hair back from her face, and it doesn't chill her. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back, the deeper red behind her eyelids without the direct sun touching them. The speckled darker spots as they pass below a line of trees and their bent boughs, and the light dapples across her. The growl of the bike’s engine is loud, but not disturbing. It never has been, to her - not his, no matter what specific bike it might be. Might just be all those weeks on the road after the farm, might be something else, but that growl is a good sound.

Lately, hearing it approach - knowing he's coming back alive. This time it's right beneath her. She's riding it, and that's good too.

It's all good. She _feels_ good. She feels good in a way she hasn't since… Christ, she doesn't even know. Cliche, but it's as if he's whisking her away from everything back there that was gnawing at her already frayed edges.

She feels almost normal.

And if this is something for which she should be experiencing guilt, well, tough shit. Guilt has been dogging her every step for months. She's well aware of that. It can have her back later. God knows it'll have the space and the time.

For now she's going to ride with him for as long as she's able, and she's going to snatch whatever freedom she can.

~

Their destination is an ex-urban shopping center about forty miles away - a fair distance for them, but not bad at the speed he's able to travel. It's been looted but not too extensively, and there's enough left to make the trip potentially worth it. Particularly of interest is a sizable Rite-Aid, spotted by the last team out this way, though they didn't have the time to investigate it as thoroughly as they wanted. The highway they take to reach it is both much bigger - four lanes - and was much once more heavily traveled, and that means more dead cars to navigate around, and more of the dead themselves to watch for. But by then the sun is fully out and the day is warming, more pleasant by the minute, flocks of geese calling overhead and red-tailed hawks wheeling out of the treeline by the shoulder, and she's unbothered. She unholsters her gun and keeps a watch as he weaves them through, and they only see a few staggering toward them through the rusting hulks, easily dispatched.

It's so difficult, sometimes, to be sure of anything he's feeling, and she can't see more than the barest profile of his face, but she senses that he's right there with her to the extent he can be. The muscles under her hands, tense when they first set out, are loosening. He likes riding, she knows it, knows it eases him anyway, but she doubts that's all it is.

He's simply happy. In his way. He's happy to be out here with her.

Something else that makes her feel good.  
  
Another twenty minutes or so and a thick sign looms on the horizon, advertising the Rite-Aid, a Marshall’s, Target, Starbucks, a number of smaller stores and a beauty supply outlet. Letters are missing here and there, paint weathered, and there are a couple of blank spaces where store names have clearly been casualties to time and weather. As always happens with her, she looks at it and feels an odd combination of melancholy and grim satisfaction. Melancholy because of course this is a lost world, a world they'll probably never get back, but satisfaction because… was that world really so great after all?

Suffering and death aside, was a world that tossed up mile after mile of soulless places like this really so amazing?

She realized a long time ago that she honestly wasn't sorry to see them in ruins. Yet another thing she never would have come straight out with, because she's well aware that it would make her sound like an asshole, maybe actually _make_ her an asshole, but she's given up trying to shake off her feelings about things.

She has.

He rounds another stacked line of front-ended cars, melded together in a crumpled metal caterpillar, and rumbles them into the parking lot - the relative emptiness of which stands in stark contrast to the highway running beside it. The world ended, and except for the standard amount of plundering, people didn't have much time or attention to devote to retail. And the place also does look relatively un-plundered. She wonders why.

There are many things she'll never know the reason for. Most things, perhaps.

Clouds are beginning to creep across the face of the sun as Daryl pulls to a stop at the curb outside the Rite-Aid, cuts the engine, and runs through the quick and reflexive inventory of his gear. She's already off the bike and standing on the sidewalk with her hands resting on her hips, scanning the front of the building. Broken glass glittering on the pavement and the window frames lined with jagged remnants, ceiling partially caved in - perhaps by a couple of winters of heavy snow. In more than one place where the roof’s overhang provides enough shelter from the elements, the glass is stained an unpleasant rust color. Any number of reasons why. By now she supposes she's seen most of the possibilities at least once already.

Four fallen walkers outside the front entrance, the automatic double doors hanging partially off their hinges.

“Last group here took care of ‘em.” Low grunt at her back. “Said they didn't see much. Better watch it, though.”

She nods absently, hand on her knife. Draws it. Plenty of time between then and now for a supply of the dead to restock itself, and anything might bring them inside. “You wanna take point, or should I?”

He lowers his bow, cocks it. “Me.” Which is nothing more or less than she expected. He won't baby her, won't second-guess her or what she can do - it's part of why she ended up deciding to go with him anyway, or why she got comfortable enough with the prospect - but he’ll be protective. She's fine with that. She knows where it comes from.

He might not be condescending about it, but he's not going to see Hershel orphaned. He’ll die first.

_We ain't losin’ nobody else._

Silently, moving with even care, she follows him through the doorway.

~

There's another walker just inside, sprawled next to a magazine rack that still displays moldy issues of _People_ and _Cosmopolitan_. Whatever Brad Pitt had been up to the day before the dead started walking, whatever the Kardashians had been shocking people with. Whatever _hot new sex tips were driving him wild in bed._ The headlines are only partially legible, but for some reason it hits her that she hasn't touched one since that first day. She was guilty of thumbing through them in doctor’s offices and checkout lines - never paid money for one but she would confess to being mildly entertained by them - and they had been such a background feature, just another ubiquitous thing that utterly vanished from the scene when there was no more practical use for them. They can't even be used for effective kindling. For the most part, they don't burn especially well.

Yet now she's looking at them and thinking again. About that world. About how it's gone.

About how so many things are gone.

She only realizes that she's stopped moving when he touches her arm, and while she doesn't jump, she twitches in a way that instantly sends a warm flush into her cheeks. Stupid. She can't afford that. Slips like that get you killed.

But he doesn't look reproachful. His face is unreadable. He jerks his head toward the back of the store.

“Heard somethin’. Think one might be hangin’ ‘round.”

“Just one?”

He shrugs. They've all gotten good at counting by sound. “One or two.”

The back is, as usual, the pharmacy. She looks past him toward it, but the far end of the store is lost in the shadows beyond rows of half empty shelves littered with boxes of bunion medication and bottles of shampoo, a wall lined with useless eyeliner and tubes of lipstick.

“I’ll check it out,” he says, tilts his head. “You start goin’ through shit out here?”

A question. Leaving the arrangements up to her. She knows immediately that if she argued against being left behind, he would back down. Switch places with her, even. But she also knows that she's not going to.

She has nothing to prove to him. Shouldn't have anything to prove to herself. Not now.

So instead she gives him a nod, which he returns, and as he starts making his way toward the rear of the building, she heads down one of the grocery aisles.

Food is something she expected to be cleared out, and it mostly is. They're also not hurting for food at present and have no prospect of doing so in the immediate future, so unless there's a big haul hiding in a storeroom somewhere, they won't be marking anything for retrieval. But she scans the few leftovers anyway - mostly packages torn open and contents clearly no longer edible - in part out of habit and in part because you simply never know. If you assume nothing is there, nothing will be.

There really is nothing, however. She kicks at a bag of chips, raises a weird combination of rustle and soggy crunch as it skitters a few feet, and at that moment she hears a snarl rise and cut off hard with the _thunk_ of a bolt into something solid. Then nothing else.

The corner of her mouth quirks grimly. Easy as pie.

She's moved on to the aisle once devoted to painkillers and fever reducers when he rejoins her, bow reloaded and re-cocked. She glances up at him, a couple bottles of Aspirin in her hands - again, you never know - and he grunts and gives her another duck of the head. _Just the one,_ he doesn't need to say.

“How bad is it cleaned out?”

“There's some shit.” Non-committal about whether any of it is useful. He must not have taken too close a look. “We’ll get there.”

She arches a brow. “Don't wanna do it now?”

“We’ll take it last. Go through the rest of the place first.” He points at the opposite wall - the cosmetics. “I start there, meet you in the middle.”

She doesn’t bother fighting back a smile. “You in the market for some decent foundation?”

The huff he lets out might mean anything to someone who doesn't know him as well as she does, but she catches his eyes rolling ceilingward as he turns away, and she can tell it was a laugh.

Good. That's good.

Thunder rumbles as she continues down the aisle, and a sharp push of wind follows seconds later, hissing through the doorway. With it comes the unmistakable, somehow green smell of rain, and she pauses and breathes it in. It might be autumn, but the storms of summer aren't yet completely done with them.

A couple large bottles of Ibuprofen, and under a small pile of debris from the ceiling she spots an even larger bottle of Peptobismal. She stuffs both into her pack with the Aspirin. Nothing left to speak of in the allergy section, and it's a safe bet that all the Sudafed they'll have kept locked up will be gone, but it's probably still worth checking for that as well when they get to the pharmacy. More: reading glasses on a rotating rack; she knows at least a few people at both the Hilltop and the Kingdom who could make use of them. Toothbrushes and toothpaste, a bottle of fluoride mouthwash. Mega-value size shampoo; they can separate it into smaller bottles and distribute it. They've been learning to make their own soap, but there's no reason to not take advantage when one can.

Something that living in the ASZ reminded her of: small luxuries should have their place. They're not facile. They're part of what makes people feel human.

The rumble of thunder continues, settling into a monotonous, nearly constant background drone. The patter of rain on the roof begins and quickens, and here and there it drips through, swelling puddles on the floor. It doesn't lull her, not exactly - she's aware of the unhurried scuffles of Daryl’s movements toward her - but it does detach her perception enough that she's startled all over again when she finds them together in the same aisle, him a few feet away from her and clearing his throat.

She's standing in front of a shelf of condoms.

Not a full shelf. It's been heavily gone over. But there are a few boxes left - ribbed for her pleasure, reservoir-tipped, even multicolored - and her hand flies to her mouth to stifle an awkward little giggle. And it's fucking ridiculous that she should have to. That she should feel awkward at all. They're just _condoms,_ and it's not like she's been caught _doing something._ It's been a long damn time since she was embarrassed by sex.

That's _really_ a luxury she can't afford.

But she is. She's uncomfortable. She's flushing again, and she's hoping that it's dim enough to conceal it from him. If he does notice, he gives her no indication, but when he repeats the low throat-clearing, she senses that the awkwardness isn't unique to her. Yet with him, she might be less surprised by it. Because she's never been able to pinpoint why, but there's pretty much always been this aura of discomfort around him when sex comes up. Except when there isn't, in which case he becomes oddly pragmatic. Oddly matter-of-fact. Almost cold.

Except the one time with the guard tower, where he laughed at her with the others. Laughed at _them_.

She was annoyed. But not all that much. It wasn't mean.

Now she closes a hand around the strap of her pack, shoots him a glance. “Find anythin’?”

“Band-Aids. Some antiseptic.” Once more he's exceedingly difficult to read. He inclines his head toward the back. “Should give that a once-over, if you're done.”

She nods, but instead of moving she turns and looks out through the wide smashed-out windows at the rain pelting the parking lot. It's getting darker with every second. In the distance, lightning spiders into the ground. “We should stay till it clears.”

He rolls a shoulder, offers no dispute. “Probably won't be too long.”

~

It's not too long. Mostly because there isn't much. _Some shit,_ for sure, but no great amount of it. One case of Amoxicillin, small enough to fit into Daryl’s pack though it's still plenty to be useful. Under a bunch of discarded Sudafed boxes - of course - is a single bottle of Ativan. Wonder of wonders that there's any at all, but it contains thirty doses, which, while it can't sustain anyone long-term, can still be effective.

There are three crates of nasal spray - unsurprising that they weren't looted, because she's not sure why anyone would care. But tucked away behind them and nearly invisible is the real prize, aside from the antibiotics: anti-seizure medication.

One of the people at the Kingdom, who has epilepsy, still has some. But they're running low, and everyone has been on edge about it. She releases a breath as she straightens up, and the smile she offers him is wide.

“There's too much to take it with. We’ll have to send someone back here for it.” Inconvenient. But also fantastic. Better too much than little enough to return with them.

He grunts, nods, hesitates and holds up a hand - _be right back_ \- and heads off through the shadows to the other end of the pharmacy. She waits and wanders, running her hand along the semi-empty shelves as her flashlight throws strange shadows ahead of her - and halts when she hears a couple of squishing thuds, a crunch, and then him returning, his footsteps slow and heavy as if he's carrying something.

Then he comes into view and she sees that he is.

He's wrapped his hands in towels, and they're gripping the slimy torso of - presumably - the walker he killed back here, the stump of its spine protruding from the torn ruin of what used to be its waist. Once she would have been horrified. Now she only raises an eyebrow at him - and raises both as he joins her, tosses the torso onto the crate of drugs with a dull thump.

Makes sense. Anyone who wanders in here will be unlikely to go digging beneath it.

He turns to her, unwinding the gore-streaked towels from his hands. With weird clarity, she notices that they once boasted a delicate floral pattern.

The rain outside is only coming down harder.

“Alright,” he says, tosses the towels into a corner behind the counter and shifts the crossbow on his back. “Let's get to the front. Stinks back here.”

~

In truth it doesn't smell much better by the doors. But together they drag the walkers out of the way and settle on the floor out of reach of the rain, looking out at the storm, Daryl pinching a cigarette between his fore and middle fingers. These days he tends to smoke primarily when he's doing some serious thinking, and she watches his face as she sucks on the end of a Twizzler out of the single sealed pack she found. Until she's not watching him anymore, until she's shifted her gaze to the rain and allowed it to unfocus and blur, and he yanks her back when he nudges her ankle lightly with his toe.

“That thing still good?”

She pulls the Twizzler free. “Good? No, it's awful.” A huff of a laugh not altogether unlike his. “But it tastes like new. I don't think these things ever go bad.”

“That's what they say about Twinkies.”

“Yeah, I heard that.” She frowns at the Twizzler. “I don't think I ever found one since the Turn, though.”

“Someone probably hoardin’ ‘em.” Her attention flicks from the Twizzler to him, and she sees with a ripple of pleasure that a smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Usin’ ‘em for currency.”

This is an odd line of conversation. Or it would be, in another life. But in truth what's odd is that he's talking to her this much at all, so she’ll keep it going. “You like Twinkies?”

“Nah. Too sweet.” He pauses, and something flickers behind his eyes. Something darker. “Merle did.”

He doesn't talk about his brother. Ever. Not with anyone, really, but _especially_ not with her, and the reason is abundantly clear. She doesn't blame him, not now, but the truth is that for those first few days of aftermath, though she hated that she felt that way, she could hardly stand to look at him, and he had to have noticed.

He sees everything.

So why is he bringing it up?

In any case, she's not sure what to say. She returns her gaze to the rain, rolling the Twizzler between her fingers like his cigarette, feeling the smooth wound-up wrapping of its sides. For some reason - maybe she's casting about for the closest distraction - her thoughts drift to the condoms, standing in the aisle and looking at them, so of course next she says one of the more ill-advised things she could say in this situation.

She might wonder if she was getting him back for something. But that's not it.

“First time I was with Glenn was in a pharmacy,” she murmurs, listens to it and thinks _oh god no what are you doing_ and then she just keeps on going, rolling downhill like a runaway snowball packing itself bigger and bigger and plummeting toward its hapless victims below. “When we went into town.”

She's already looking at him, stomach churning and half wanting to offer an apology, yet again not even totally sure _why,_ and he's looking back at her with hooded eyes, cigarette dangling from his lip. After a few frozen seconds he plucks it free and taps ash onto a patch of dried blood.

“I know.”

Of course he knows.

And before she can figure out what to say to that, he saves her the trouble. Saves her, _period,_ and the smile he gives her is tiny and sad, his voice barely audible beneath the drumming rain. “You know he fell hard for you day one, right?”

“I know.” She knows. She always knew. Before she gets a handle on it, she's returning the smile. An ache settles into her throat. “He never hid things like that. Never could.”

“First time I ever saw it.” Still low. Not looking at her anymore, but the smile hasn't disappeared, though there's more pain in it than there was. “People together. Like that. You two. There was Rick and Lori, sure, but that was… It was different. And Lori and Shane was-” He stops, mouth twisting, the smile at last gone. “First time I saw it,” he murmurs again, and he doesn't have to specify what he means.

_Falling in love._

“I didn't know it could happen,” she says quietly.

“Me neither.”

She pushes her hair back from her face - fuck, need to get it _cut_ \- and leans back against the wall, staring up at the water-spotted ceiling. “You meet someone, or you see ‘em a new way, and it's like they change everythin’.”

“Yeah,” he says, very soft. “They do.”

 _We’re talking,_ she thinks, and a faint shiver runs down her spine, like the glide of a cold fingertip. _And we’re also not talking at all._

And they don't say anything else, until some immeasurable amount of time later, when the rain has stopped, and she climbs on the bike behind him and wraps her arms around his waist, his heat and his silent strength and everything she doesn't know, and he takes them both home.


	8. you've got me up against the fender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still taking longer with this than I would like - still switching off between three other WIPs - but like I said, I don't think there's a huge amount more of this. Though I'm often wrong when it comes to that. 
> 
> Regardless, it's gone further and deeper than I ever anticipated. Which is also pretty much par for the course with me. 
> 
> ❤️

 

>   
>  _We were in the gold room where everyone_  
>  _finally gets what they want, so I said What do you_  
>  _want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am_  
>  _leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome_  
>  _burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,_  
>  _my silent night, just mash your lips against me._  
>  _We are all going forward. None of us are going back._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, "Snow and Dirty Rain"

 

They're pulling through the gate when the rain starts up again, not bothering with a slow build or a few warning drops but slamming, with a crash of thunder, into a full-on downpour. The clouds had lingered above them the whole way home, low and dark and throwing the world into a premature evening, threatening mutters in the distance. So in fact it's not really a surprise, and Maggie is merely thankful - to the great Whoever whose existence she's only now willing to acknowledge as a vague potentiality - that it held off until they got home. But they're instantly soaked, and she hops off the bike as soon as he pulls it to a halt, another roar from overhead drowning out the loud creak as the gate is pushed closed after them. Hugging her pack to her chest, shielding it as best she can - though there's nothing in particular in it that genuinely needs the shielding - she runs for the house and up the steps, stumbling through the door.

She stops, dripping onto the hardwood, and shakes her wet hair out of her eyes, palming away water as she sets her pack down by the doorway. She turns, looking back, and it's only when she sees that Daryl isn't following her that she realizes she assumed he would be. He's still on the bike, the engine growling, and suddenly her gut twists, her slick hands snapping into fists at her sides.

_Don't go. Don't go out there again._

He doesn't. He turns the bike and rumbles it toward one of their makeshift garages, and she releases a breath.

He might yet come in. He doesn't always sleep here when he stays at the Hilltop, but there's room for him, and sometimes he does, and he might.

For another moment or two she stands in the doorway, one hand on the frame, watching him until he's out of view. Then she turns, closes the door, and as she picks up the pack, Hershel’s cry echoes softly down to her, as if he knows she's home.

He has a bottle and formula, and Enid will have fed him if he needed feeding. But she recognizes his hunger-fussing, and though she's abruptly very tired, her drenched clothes seeming twice as heavy as they should be, she's smiling as she starts toward the stairs.

There's an old armchair where she likes to nurse him, by one of the windows in her room. It's deep and soft from long years of use, enfolding her when she sinks into it, and right now she wants nothing more than to slough off her clothes like a skin that's long overstayed its welcome, put on dry things, cradle her son against her breast and hold him in that chair, watching the last of the gray light fade and humming to him until he drinks himself to sleep.

She feels good. She felt good going out, and she feels good now. It’s what she was hoping for. It's what she wanted.

 _Almost_.

~

Enid is in that chair when Maggie enters the room, rocking Hershel and murmuring something faintly musical to him, and when she looks up and meets Maggie’s eyes, Maggie sees something akin to relief and the ghost of what might be frustration.

She can guess why. It's an expression with which she's extremely familiar. She's seen it often enough in the mirror.

“Thank Christ.” Enid settles Hershel against her shoulder and rises, coming over to meet her with a tired smile - not as tired as Maggie feels, but it's not a contest she'd be especially interested in having. “I haven't been able to get him to be quiet all damn day. I can't figure out what's wrong.”

“Might be nothin’. You know he gets moods.” Maggie holds her arms out for him, gathers him in as Enid hands him over and presses her cheek to the top of his head. And seconds before she does, the light catches Enid’s face just right - just _wrong_ \- and her hair, her whole form with Hershel in her arms, and it's difficult to breathe.

The prison. Gray afternoon so much like this one, bleeding into evening like waterlogged ink, and half in shadow, a blond girl stands in a cell doorway with a baby in her arms, face lowered and her voice rising sweet and clear to echo gently off the walls.

And a rough man with a crossbow slung over his shoulder leans against a railing above her and listens.

“Maggie?” Enid peering at her, concern furrowing her brow. “You alright?”

“Yeah.” She draws a breath - slightly shaky. Hershel whimpers, but when she shushes him he allows himself to be shushed, nestling his face against the side of her neck. It helps, spills calm into her, and she manages a smile that she doesn't have to try very hard for. She means it. “Was just a long day.”

“You find anything out there?”

“Some stuff. Nothin’ big, but we got some meds for Greg back at the Kingdom. Next group out’ll pick ‘em up.”

“Oh. Good.” Enid looks pleased - she doesn't really know Greg, but by this point most people in all three places are at least aware of each other, aware of the basics of biography.

There are fewer of them to keep track of than there were a year ago.

“I’m gonna head down to the kitchen.” Enid steps past her, glances back. “You want me to get you anything?”

“Water’s good.” Except it's not. The words aren't even fully past her lips before her stomach winches itself in and complains. “Actually, wait. Any of those pomegranates left?”

Enid nods. “I think there's a couple. I'll bring you one?”

Her stomach lodges another formal protest at its emptiness, and she smiles again. “That’d be great.”

But after Enid vanishes, everything goes soft around the edges. Outside, the rain is still pelting down, but in here it's muffled into a low and soothing drone. She remembers days like this on the farm, days too rainy for any but the most necessary chores, and they would all stay inside, maybe with a fire going in the parlor, and play board games, and Shawn would cheat and be shit at hiding it, and now and then Beth would cheat and hide it almost perfectly. And Mama would warm up some cider, and play their ancient piano and sing duets with Beth, and sometimes Daddy would read aloud to them, his quiet, strong voice and the crackling of the fire making their own kind of duet, one that hung in the air long after he fell silent.

It was idyllic, she now understands. Nearly cliche. But it was real, and it happened, and it was hers.

And in moments like this, it doesn't feel like it's gone. Not completely.

Pressing a kiss to the top of Hershel’s downy head, she moves to the bed, lays him carefully down onto it, and goes to change.

~

At sunset, it's still raining. But the clouds have parted on the horizon, and the world is thrown into one of those strange moments where there's rain and sunlight both together, the sunlight in question low and dim and a washed-out red catching each falling drop and making it glitter. There's something deeply unreal about how it looks, how it _feels,_ like the kind of light that could only exist in a dream.

The Hilltop is quieting down for the evening, people leaving their chores and going in for dinner. Hershel is dozing in his crib upstairs, well-fed and at last content. Maggie sits on the top step of the expansive porch, leaning on one of the white pillars, her eyes half closed and her arms wrapped around her knees.

Listening. Drifting between the drops, rising into that strange light and looking out at that distant horizon. With her attention unfocused, the rain itself sounds like a chorus of whispers. Saying what?

She can almost make it out.

Without noticing it - until she does - she's started to sing. Very soft, very low, the words only faintly annunciated and stretched into her long Georgia vowels.

> _Away to the window, to the window she did go_  
>  _To see whether he could see his love or no_  
>  _The answer that she made him with the tears all in her eyes_  
>  _She loved the man that loved her and she'd love him till she died_

Seconds after she knows she's singing, she knows he's standing there at the foot of the steps, staring up at her with an unreadable expression on his face. Soaked and heedless of it, his clothes clinging to his powerful frame and his hair plastered to the sides of his face - he never seems to care much about things like that, just like he never seems to care much for his body at all. She looks back at him, blinking, dimly startled.

And she hasn't stopped singing. 

> _Away to the wars, to the wars he did go_  
>  _To see whether he could forget his love or no_  
>  _He served one long year, he served his king_  
>  _And in one more long year he returned home again_

The last note shivers out from between her lips and she's silent. So is he.

She's still shivering.

Finally, dripping, he climbs the steps and lowers himself to sit beside her, gazing out at the oncoming twilight. He might be following the line of her attention - but she's watching him from the corner of her eye, scanning him as the shiver localizes and collects in the pit of her stomach.

How long was he standing there? How long was he listening to her?

For what feels like hours, he doesn't speak. Until he does, leaning over his bent knees and gnawing at his thumbnail.

“Jesus’s gonna go after the meds tomorrow.”

 _Oh_. Good. “Not by himself?”

He shakes his head. “Gonna take Sasha. Head straight to the Kingdom after.”

She's glad. Greg should have enough to carry him through the end of next week, but sooner is better than later. Turning a little, she shoots him a smile, though she's not positive he sees it.

No, he does see it. Of course he does.

Thunder rumbles but not close by. The storm is on its way out, or so it appears. Also good; the yard in front of the gate is nothing but mud and it'll take more than a day of bright sun to dry it out. Maybe, she thinks, they should consider laying down some gravel. Something else to bring up the next time the community holds a meeting.

Quiet again.

Then, as soft as her singing was, he exhales and ducks his head. “Heard that song before.”

“Yeah?” She's not all that surprised. It's a very old song.

“Yeah. Can't remember where, though.” His fingers are pulling at each other, worrying at themselves; as with the smoking, he tends to do this when he's pensive. Or worried. “Could be at the prison.” He pauses, and she bites at the inside of her cheek. Singing at the prison only means one thing. But then he continues, and he does surprise her. “Ma sang sometimes.”

He's never talked about his mother. Not to her.

“What did she sing?”

“Old shit. I dunno.” He shrugs, not entirely comfortable - but he brought it up, and without prompting. He never would have done so accidentally. She can't imagine why he would do that unless, for some reason, he wanted to. “Most of the time she couldn't remember a lot of the words.”

“Old songs? Like folk songs?” Maybe she shouldn't persist, push him further along this line of conversation - even gently - but he doesn't seem inclined to put her off. He has ways of making it piercingly clear when he no longer wants to discuss something. Among other things he simply stops.

“I guess.” The corner of his mouth twitches, the tiniest smile. “A lot of ‘em were about assholes killin’ people.”

In spite of herself, she laughs. And it is funny, even if she can't quite articulate why. “Murder ballads.”

He looks at her, slight and surprised amusement tugging at his features. “That actually what they're called? They got a name?”

She nods. “They're a… a _genre,_ I think. I think that's the right word. A ton of folk songs are about murder. Murder and hangin’.” Extremely morbid, now that she thinks about it, yet all the murder ballads she knows are lovely. Achingly so. Beautiful enough to make you forget the words.

“Why the fuck would anyone wanna write a bunch of songs about that?”

“I dunno.” Shrug. “Maybe it used to happen more often.”

Except murder happens all the time now. It's commonplace. Unremarkable. It's just another thing. No sense in writing any songs about it. She's seen firsthand how ugly it is.

She's seen firsthand in a way she never thought possible.

He huffs. “Maybe people are just really fucked up.”

“Yeah.” She leans back, fully facing him now. If they're going to talk, she wants to look at him, and she doesn't want to be shy about it. “They really are.”

“What you was singin’ wasn't about that,” he murmurs, meeting her eyes, and she swallows hard. She would like to forget that she was singing to begin with, and she sure as hell doesn't want to talk about the song itself. She’s perfectly aware that she can sometimes be willfully oblivious, set aside things she doesn't want to deal with, but she knows what the song was, what it was _about,_ and she would rather talk about any number of other things.

Yet she doesn't feel equipped to steer him away. For such a gentle, hesitant man when it comes to talking, he's almost impossible to shut out.

“No. It wasn't.” She sighs. “It's about people who’re… separated.”

By a cruel father who won't give his consent. But the _why_ doesn’t matter. Not when you come right down to it - and they are down to it.

He rolls a shoulder, his minuscule smile turning wry. “Hey, didn't sound like the guy fuckin’ _died_. Unless there's more.”

“I don't remember if there's more. If he dies, it's not in the war, anyway.”

“So could be a murder ballad after all.” He pauses again, so long she wonders if he might not say any more. He's staring at his hands now, his fingers still moving, working over each other as if he's wearing down something invisible. The light is leaching the color from his skin, making him look pale as bone. “Maybe they're all murder ballads if they go on long enough.”

_If they go on long enough, either way someone dies._

“Or maybe they find each other.” She tilts her head. This doesn't feel like an argument, except it almost does. “Maybe they’re together in the end.”

When he answers, it comes out heavy, a little heated, more feeling than she would have expected - not that he feels, but that he’ll show it like this. “That don’t ever happen.”

 _Rick and Michonne,_ she starts to say, to protest, but stops dead, her jaw working. Because is that true? Is that really what happened with them? Before the war, that might have been so, but the world before a war and the world after one are two completely different things, and no one gets to come back from that. No one comes out the other end whole.

Rick sure as hell didn't.

She sits up straighter, looking at him, her throat knotting in a way she hates and wants desperately to stop. There are things they haven't talked about, haven't ever even approached, except for isolated points in time, moments of breakage where he reached out - and it's always been him. It's always been him to break through himself and find words, even if she was there for him to grasp when he did.

_He was tough. So was she. She didn't know it._

_But she was._

And then he put music in her hands.

“Not everything is shit,” she says softly. Even as part of her is shouting that it _is,_ it all is, it's all _shit,_ she watched the man she loved get clubbed to death, watched his beautiful face beaten into a pulp, and she couldn't do anything to stop it, and she lost him and has to live without him now, forever, no matter what he said, and he never got to meet his _son_.

And murdering Negan with his own fucking bat didn't help.

Not that she expected it to.

They lose the best among them, over and over, watch them slaughtered by this shitty world, and there's nothing to be done. And here she and Daryl are, sitting together in the ruins. Yet she's saying it. _Not everything is shit._ As if the words are hers.

Though they both know the truth.

He snorts, and she can tell he's trying to be dismissive, but she can also tell it’s forced. He's retreating, attempting to hide it - that it hurts, because he can’t just dismiss it, because they've both heard it before and they've both been _made_ to hear. They've both dared to believe it.

A sudden gust of wind slams rain against the windowpanes, spatters the sides of their faces like ocean spray.

“When I see you with him,” she says, even softer - this time the words are hers, though they're coming unbidden from somewhere undiscovered inside her, and therefore more honest than anything she could take the time to consider. “How you are. How much you care about him. You can't tell me you hold him and you really think it's all shit.”

_You can't tell me you really think every song ends in murder. In death._

Grunt. He isn't looking at her anymore. His face is still turned toward hers, but his eyes have dropped down and away, focused somewhere between his twisting hands and his muddy boots.

“ _Daryl_.” She inches closer, and as she does she wrestles back the bizarre and unwelcome impulse to seize him, frame his face with her hands and _make_ him look at her, make him do it like they've both been made to hear what she's trying to tell him now. “If nothin’ else means anythin’ good to you, I know he does. So if that's-”

“He's not the only thing.”

Very soft. Softer than she was. Whatever else she was going to say dies on her tongue and she stares at him, and he stares back, eyes wide, lips parted and moving slightly, as if he's working through what words he wants to use next. Though she knows perfectly well that he has no idea.

There's only one thing he can mean by it. Or many things, but a single category, and it's what's always driven him. Family. These people who have adopted him, who he's finally allowed himself to feel safe with, who he's made into the only home he truly keeps. The people he fights to provide for, to protect. The love he has here, with Rick, with Carol, with Michonne, with all of them.

All that. He must mean that.

He doesn't. It's true, but in this moment, that's not what he means.

She whispers his name again. And then as thunder slams down, every constraint unwinds itself and every wall crumbles with a moan like relief, and she gives in, does what she wanted to do, reaches up and frames his face with her hands. His cool, damp skin, strands of his hair trapped under her fingers, his stubble prickling her palms and the clear flash of his eyes as lightning spikes. She notices these details in the frozen second - familiar - before she leans in. Not the pomegranate seed this time. Not her fingertip, not his lip yielding beneath its pressure.

The pressure of her lips. Barely touching his at all, barely a graze, but then all at once it's so much more; she presses into it, her mouth over his, and he stiffens, goes rigid. Stone.

But his lips are warm and soft. And she can't help it, fuck it, she _can't,_ and she opens enough to flick her tongue against him, salt and the faintly mineral taste of the rain, and that's when he sighs and shivers and she feels the weight of his hand on her knee.

She should be screaming at herself about how _wrong this is._

And yet.

And yet he's snapping himself backward and shoving clumsily at her, scrambling, desperate, his jaw working, his features wrenched with horror. More than horror - everything she _should_ be feeling and isn't, every sick, lurching part of it, every loop of the agonized tapestry her own guts should be weaving over her bones.

He looks a little like he's just watched them both die all over again. In that fucking clearing.

In that fucking hallway.

“Daryl,” she gasps, reaching for him again even as she knows that it's the exact wrong thing to do, watching in despair as he cringes away from her and stumbles to his feet. “It's not-”

“ _Don't_.” Down the couple of steps between him and the ground, another step backward, shaking his head. The rain has found a second wind and is falling heavier. “Don't.”

He whirls, and he's gone.

She didn't notice it when she stood up, but she stands, gazing uselessly into the dark and listening for the sound of his bike. She's fucked it up, she thinks numbly. She's fucked it all up, one moment of hideous weakness and she sent the whole fucking thing to shit, destroyed one of the few good things she has left - because yes, he _is_ that. He is. He's good, he's good to _her,_ he makes her feel safe without making her feel weak, and she can be with him in speaking or in silence and just _be_.

He never demanded anything from her. Never expected anything. Through hell after hell, he's been with her. And now she's gone and fucked it all up, likely beyond repair.

No bike. Not the most distant growl except for the thunder.

Until the groan of the gate, and with an abrupt wave of calm, she knows what she has to do.

She turns and races back into the house, already calling for Enid.

~

She's never ridden his bike except as a passenger. But she knows how; it's not the only bike they have, the others part of the spoils when the Sanctuary finally fell to them, and she's barely thinking about it when, as the gate opens, she turns the key and the bike roars to life.

Left the keys right there. Like he expected to go out. Except now he's on foot, and fuck knows why - and he doesn't need a reason. Neither of them do. They're both being driven by their own logic, unstoppable as the proverbial freight train, and to question it is nothing but a waste of time.

Anyway, as she rolls through the gate and out into the pouring night, she knows exactly where he's going. Only place he ever could have gone. Probably they were always headed there.

Headed _back_ there.

It's just like Morgan says. Everything gets a return.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, quick story about music. 
> 
> The song Maggie is singing is called "The Lover's Lament", and I found it in an old book of American folk songs. I usually try to find audio versions of songs I use in fic for those who are interested. However, the version I did find - which is utterly gorgeous - appears to be a completely different song. In addition, the lyrics are _so_ pointed - someone singing to their dead lover about how there will never be anyone else for them and they'll always remain faithful - that I considered rewriting the entire scene to fit them.
> 
> In the end I decided that doing so would entirely change the trajectory of the conversation, so I elected not to. But if you want to hear the song, [here it is.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IFfbmj22C-Y) And God, it really is lovely. The entire album is available on Spotify.
> 
> And since I've been having some wine and I'm experiencing a lot of feelings about this song, which I also think is totally this fic, the title is taken from Anaïs Mitchell's ["Cosmic American".](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qpblS1OFX28)


	9. it slowly rises, your love is going to drown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. Important one, though. I think we only have two or three left, but we'll see. 
> 
> Said on Tumblr already but I need to thank you guys so much; the response to this fic has been much more enthusiastic than I expected, especially given that I'm pretty sure 90% of you are Bethyl people. It means a lot. ❤️

> _We have not touched the stars,_   
>  _nor are we forgiven, which brings us back_   
>  _to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,_   
>  _not from the absence of violence, but despite_   
>  _the abundance of it._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, "Snow and Dirty Rain"

 

Ordinarily she might have expected to catch up with him, and she's hoping she might yet. But not with any particular expectation. She knows him; she intuits that he won't be using the road but will instead be heading cross-country through the woods, part plan but mostly sheer instinct, because the woods and meadows are always where he's been most at home. 

And he'll be going as fast as he can, fleeing from her. Fleeing from _them,_ from _this._

He won't ever be able to run fast enough. She thinks of that, and it makes her heart hurt. 

Not like she wasn't doing plenty of her own fleeing. She considers this as she speeds the bike through the dark, moderating only enough to keep from skidding out on the wet road. Not like she might not still be. But she can't. Not anymore. She's not giving herself the option. The dreams that are roaring back louder than the bike’s engine, the warmth and the gentle strength of him, the taste of his lips. It twists her into painful knots, but she was in pain anyway. 

So is he. Maybe, in some ways, worse than she ever was. Because it's hard for her to ask for help, but him? 

He's never known how. 

The rain beats against her face in a thousand tiny points of pressure, hard enough to feel like sleet. Thunder crashes. With each flare of lightning she finds herself scanning the treeline, looking for any glimpse of him. But if she doesn't see him, it's not as if it matters. Not as if it makes any difference in the end.

They're going to the same place. 

And on some level he has to know that she'll meet him there. 

~ 

It's not that close. But going like she is, her mind racing yards ahead of her body, it feels like minutes. Like nothing. She hasn't been here since That Night, hasn't had any reason to, and the few times she caught herself morbidly toying with the idea, she recoiled with a shudder. But she's not shuddering now, not with anything but the cold and the wet as she growls into the clearing.

She's not sure what she expected. It looks exactly the same, except it looks completely different. The trees lean in like malevolent spectators waiting for the next act of the horrific show which, a year ago, she was forced to be part of. The ground is a mess of mud and twigs and wet leaves interspersed with patches of shiny gravel. If there was better light to see by, maybe she would be able to make out the places where it happened, where they were slaughtered, where _he_ was slaughtered, as if the dirt is stained too deeply to ever wash clean, even in a downpour like this one. 

But no. She knows she would never be able to find it. It's gone. All that remains is the ground, the trees, and - illuminated by the now nearly constant lightning - him. 

Standing in the center of the clearing, his head tilted back and his hair falling lank around his face. His hands are hanging loose and empty at his sides, and it hits her how naked he looks without the bow, how helpless. How small. How for such a long time he didn't have it, and some part of her noticed that it was as if a part of him was missing. 

He _was_ helpless, the last time he was here. They all were. He was helpless and broken and she knows he wanted to die.

_God, please don't tell me he wants that now. Please, not that._

At some point she cut off the engine. He hasn't moved in all that time. Now she climbs off and stands in the rain, stands as still as he is, and looks at him. 

Neither of them would be able to find the place where Glenn died. But it doesn't matter, because they've both been carrying that place around with them, wherever they go, never able to put it down. They've been carrying this fucking clearing on their backs - and he hasn't been content with that: he's been dragging a hallway behind him, an entire hospital, an entire fucking _city,_ because she never had to watch Beth die in that place, but he did, and she doesn't need to see into his head to know that he's been watching it over and over ever since. 

That when Glenn died, he saw it again. Superimposed, a ghost of an image overlaying the unbearable present. 

Seeing it now. 

She doesn't say his name. She doubts he could hear her anyway, unless she shouted. Instead she lurches her body into motion and starts toward him, feeling as if she's slogging through mud up to her knees. He's facing mostly away from her, still no indication that he's even aware of her - though he must be. 

Maybe he simply doesn't care. 

He's deeply uncomfortable with being touched, she knows it and before she's almost always respected it, but when she reaches him, she throws that utterly aside and reaches _for_ him, wraps her arms around him and presses her forehead against the plane between his shoulderblades. He stiffens, twists, and she's certain he's going to pull away and she'll let him, but he doesn't; he shudders, far more violently than she did - close to a brief convulsion - and slumps in her hold, heaving breath. Gasping. 

She's not thinking through any of this. Something beyond her is guiding her, directing her body. Whispering that _this is right,_ this is what he needs, and as she squeezes him tighter, she's filled with the strange conviction that she's done this before. 

But there's no way she ever could have. 

She doesn't release him when the rest of his muscles go lax and he crumples to his knees. She goes with him, clinging to him, on her knees behind him and bending over him as he braces himself up with his hands. He's not far from prostrate, and she thinks of a supplicant, imploring mercy from some pagan god. 

Except there's no way he wants mercy. Not really. 

His shuddering hasn't subsided. If anything it's getting worse, and she hears the vibration in the core of his chest, the sobs wracking him. Wracking _her,_ she realizes that she's crying too, and she gropes at him, trying to get him to turn toward her. He's struggling, making weak attempts to pull away, but she won't let him go, she _can't,_ and somehow she moves him and herself enough that they're facing each other. Another couple of seconds and then he's no longer fighting her. Looking at him through her tears and the rain running from her hair into her eyes, she recognizes how he is, because he was like this that night - on his knees and sobbing, and she couldn't get to him. 

Then they dragged him away, and she was absolutely certain she was never going to see him again. 

Until she did. 

Like before on the porch, she frames his face, lifts it to hers, pushes his wet hair out of his eyes with her thumbs. It's possible that she's finally speaking. It's possible that she finally knows what to say. 

“Stop. _Stop_ it, Daryl. It wasn't your fault. You hear me? It wasn't _anythin’_ you did, you couldn't have stopped it, it wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault when she died. It's not on you. _It wasn't your fault either time._ ” 

Shaking his head, his features twisted almost beyond recognition as the lightning cascades surreal shadows over them both, the kind of light normally found in nightmares. She pulls him closer, ruthless, and she _is_ shouting, shouting to be heard over the thunder and to be heard over whatever he's doing to shut her voice out. Protecting himself from what she's trying to give him. 

“Stop _punishing_ yourself for it. Fucking _stop._ ”

_Stop, so I can stop too._

Finally and with a single desperate effort, he meets her eyes, his wild and stricken, and she destroys the last wall and seals her mouth over his. 

He freezes. She'd swear she feels the temperature of his skin drop ten degrees. 

Then something in him breaks wide open, loud as the thunder, and he moans against her as he first rises and then surges into the kiss, his trembling hands finding the sides of her neck just beneath her jaw, tilting her head further as he traces his tongue across the seam of her lips. Like it’s his turn to break her, and she opens up and takes him in, slides her tongue against his and tastes him, and _Christ,_ it's been so fucking long since she kissed anyone and it should still feel wrong and it still doesn't. 

It feels so good. 

It's not all of him with her. He wants to pull away. She can tell as she curls her arms around his neck and rakes her fingers into his hair and licks into his mouth - the tension in him winding up, his terror, the salt of his tears as she glides her lips over his cheek. But he's not letting her go either; he's pressing in closer and hooking an arm around her waist, hand splayed over her spine as she pushes up on her knees and practically climbs into his lap, straddling his thighs. She could be drowning, gasping for breath like he was when she first reached him; she hasn't stopped crying and she's not making any attempt to do so, everything she's been damming up for a year flooding out of her at last and carried away by the endless rain. Weeping and kissing Daryl Dixon and being kissed by him on the ground where her husband, his brother, the man they both loved died.

And no, it doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn't feel like she's betraying anything at all. 

_Stop._ Still whispering the word - or maybe he is. _Stop. Just stop._

_Don't stop. Oh, God. God, please don't stop._

He's not cold anymore. He's so warm against her, burning in the circle of her arms, all his gentle strength and the weakness beneath and beside it, and she leans her forehead against his and finds one of his shaking hands with her own.   

“Come home with me,” she breathes. “Come home.” 

He releases a quivering sigh, his face screwing for a few seconds into a grimace of pain, relaxing just as quickly. Nods. 

_Come home._

She's not talking about the Hilltop. The Hilltop isn't home for either of them, and it never will be. She understands that now. And she already did; she simply thought that, since the home she had was beaten to death in front of her, she would never have another one. 

Of course she never knew if he had one that way. But she suspects that he did. For a little while, for such a terribly short time before it was ripped away from him, he did. 

_Come home with me._

He does.


	10. I could see for miles, miles, miles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't entirely sure how this chapter was going to go for a while, and it wasn't entirely easy, but in the end I think I'm pretty happy with where it went. There's one more chapter after this one, which I'll try to write fairly quickly. 
> 
> Although the chapter title comes from Bon Iver's song "Holocene", the guiding song for the whole thing - and kind of my "love theme" for this entire story - is [Angel Olsen's "Windows."](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OWP6tHnHx8k) Which actually made me cry as I was writing the last section and it was unfair. 
> 
> The lyric "what's so wrong with the light". It's just so them, dammit.
> 
> ❤️

  

> _You do not have to be good._  
>  _You do not have to walk on your knees_  
>  _for a hundred miles through the desert repenting._  
>  _You only have to let the soft animal of your body_  
>  _love what it loves._  
>  _Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._
> 
> \- Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"

 

So they come home.

When they make their way up the front steps of the house, the sky is still pouring itself onto them. But the thunder and lightning have eased into distant flashes and even more distant rumbles. He drove the bike, and all the way back, her cheek pressed against his back, she thought about the trip from the Rite-Aid, touching him - touching so _much_ of him - and not in any way she hadn't done before, but all the same, it was never like that. Never like this.

Never taking his hand and leading him to the door, inside, across the floor to the stairs and up. It’s very late. The house is dim and quiet. The two of them move without disturbing the silence, their steps muffled by the dense carpet runner, walking down the hall like a pair of ghosts.

She doesn't hate the idea. In some ways it's exactly correct. In some ways it's perfect.

He doesn't quite balk when they reach her door. But he stops, tenses up, and she turns to see him looking back at her with his eyes wide, lips parted, all nervous apprehension. He hasn't pulled his hand free of hers; he's gripping it even tighter, as if he's afraid that he might lose her if he lets go.

He feels everything at once. He can't not. And right now he wants so much to be here and he's so certain he shouldn't be.

She lifts her free hand, lays her fingertips against his cool cheek. Rough stubble beneath them; she knows what that roughness feels like beneath her lips, and a tiny shiver takes her.

“It's alright.” No louder than a whisper. “You can.” He can what? It's not fully articulated, nothing clear beyond the simple fact of his presence. But one thing is clear enough to her and must be just as clear to him: whatever happens on the other side of this door, there's no coming back from it.

They don't get to come back.

That's not always a bad thing.

“Please,” she adds, because while she isn't going to force him to do anything, he needs more than an invitation. He needs some nudging, even if only a little. He needs encouragement. One of the first things she noticed about him: the way he circled the edges of things, unwilling to be in the thick of them, and it didn't take her long to understand that it wasn't a dislike of the others so much as the conviction that they wouldn't want him among them.

And she does. She wants him. Like every part of her is reaching for him.

He ducks his head, angled partially away from her. Still appearing as if he might be about to bolt. But when she opens the door and steps through, he follows her.

~

The room is dark, no moonlight breaking through the clouds, and she leaves him standing just inside, closing the door behind him, while she crosses to the lamp beside the bed and turns it on. Solar panels taken from Sanctuary when they stripped it of everything useful; she's glad to not have to hunt around for matches, and the electric glow is brighter than fire but nearly as soft. When she turns back to him, it's throwing his own darkness into sharper relief rather than illuminating him - the way the rain has deepened his brown hair to black, gray shirt to black, his pants, his skin so pale in contrast. Even more like a ghost, and he briefly meets her eyes before dropping his to the floor, uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

So she stops, shifts her gaze. Moves back toward him and past him to her adjoining bathroom, collecting a couple of towels from a shelf by the tub and returning to him.

She hands him one. He takes it, looking down at it as if he's not entirely sure what it is or what it's for. Odd amusement flutters in her belly.

No. That's not all it is.

Stepping away, she rubs the towel briskly over her hair, pats her face and neck. When he comes back into view he's doing the same, but clumsily, as if he's never done it before, and he's still not meeting her eyes.

He clears his throat. “Where's the baby?”

“Enid has him. He's fine.”

And she could do this differently. She has every reason to do it differently. She has every reason to get some clothes from her dresser, retreat to the bathroom, shut the door and change there. He doesn't have any clothes here to change into, but she could give him a moment to gather himself. If she did it like that, it would settle everything down for him. It would perhaps even give him an out, because while he would be so torn over it, she would be giving him the chance to slip away without having to do so under her gaze.

She doesn't do any of these things. She faces the bed and tosses the towel onto it, red soaked into maroon in the warm light, and bends to remove her boots - and takes the hem of her shirt and pulls it off over her head.

He inhales. Sharp intake of breath; she hears it and it prickles the skin on the nape of her neck. There really is no coming back, not from the choice she's making now, not from reaching back to unhook her bra and shrugging it off her shoulders.

She doesn't feel crazy, unbuckling her belt and unzipping her fly. She feels as sane as she's ever been. This is a choice, but it also feels like where she was always headed, though her stomach is jumping and her breath is coming quick and shallow, and something like adrenaline is flooding into her bloodstream as she slides her jeans and panties down her thighs.

The air is cool on her damp skin, raising goosebumps and tightening her nipples into hard little peaks. He's utterly silent behind her, silent as the house and just as full of shadows, and as she straightens and turns to face him, she remembers her dream. No shying any from it, what it was and what it meant. When he was inside her. When he _came_ inside her, and he didn't make a sound.

He does make a sound. It's choked, close to a sob, and he looks at her and then jerks his face away, his eyes squeezed shut and the towel hanging forgotten in his hands.

The urge to cover herself sweeps over her. But it passes like a cramp and leaves her. She stands there, naked and gazing at him, and all at once she's calm.

This is right. Even if he says no in the end, this is right.

“You don't have to,” she says, so quiet. “You don't have to stay. I don't wanna make you do somethin’ you don't wanna do. But Daryl… Daryl, I want you to stay.” She takes a long breath, finds a center blooming at her core, and steps toward him, licking her lips. “I want you to be with me.”

He lifts his head, looks at her again - solely at her face. His eyes are boring into hers. She can see the workings of his head like clockwork through glass: to him, looking at any other part of her will feel like taking something that he has no right to.

So she’ll have to make it clear that she's offering. Giving, if he’ll take it.

Take her.

She halts, so close to him, settles her hands on his chest. Feels the shaky rise and fall of his breathing, the rapid, frightened galloping of his heart, and leans in to graze her lips against his.

It might be the first time she's ever kissed him. As if all the times before were merely practice, and this is real in a way they never were.

“I don't want you to be him,” she murmurs. She tips her brow against his, breathes him in. Swallows. She has to say this. It might be the most important thing, in this moment, that she could ever say to him. “And I know you don't want me to be her.”

For a few breathless seconds he's motionless, and she's sure he’ll leave her after all.

Then he drops the towel, his rough hands find her waist and his rough mouth finds hers, and he moans in unison with her as she clenches her fingers into the drenched fabric of his shirt and presses full-bodied against him.

Kissing him in the clearing, it was in fact barely kissing at all. It was something more desperate, more _raw,_ wanting to be so close to him so badly that skin felt like nothing more than an irritating barrier - kissing him because she couldn't crawl inside him, because it was the only way she could think to tear down the walls he was frantically constructing. Because it was what her body howled at her to do. But even straddling him, the insides of her thighs pressed against his, she wasn't thinking about this - about what it's doing to her, his hands on her like this, and he feels so big and she feels _small,_ needy for his strength, and like so many other parts of this she should hate it, and she doesn't.

He’s been so hesitant. Even before they went this far, so nervous. Now he drags in a breath - air drawn from her lungs - and nudges his tongue between her lips, and she parts them and sighs. Maybe he could get bolder with her, she thinks dizzily, his fingertips tracing up the dip of her spine and his teeth closing lightly and perhaps accidentally on her lower lip - so gentle but it spikes pain through her and she gasps and stiffens.

He pulls back, one hand curved over her hip and his other rising to cup her face; she catches the way his eyes widen, as if he can't quite believe what he's doing. Thumb caressing the line of her jaw. If anything he's shaking even harder than he was before.

He's so scared.

“It's not-” he starts, and then stops, mouth working helplessly. He looks totally lost, floundering, and all she can do is reach for him and hold on.

“I'm alright.” She tugs him and leans in, ghosting her lips across his cheek to the corner of his mouth. Nearly chaste. “I promise. It's just…” _It hurts_. It's always hurt. Every second of the wasteland of Aftermath has been pain, and nothing that could possibly happen now could ever change that.

But that's not the point. Even if she hasn't the first idea how to explain that to him.

Maybe he knows anyway.

“I don't want you to stop,” she whispers finally, and before he can come up with another protest, before _she_ can, she's kissing him again. And she's succeeded in breaking something inside him, because he holds her even tighter, closer, wrapping his arms around her like he's simply hugging her as his mouth works over hers, and even if he's still afraid, even if she can still feel the tension wound like wire over his muscles, he's emerging.

When did he last do this? She's known him for so long and in all that time she's certain he never has. Not with anyone. For a little while she thought maybe something would happen with Carol, but it quickly became clear to her that it didn't work that way with them, and then…

God, he's been so alone.

Awkwardly, not letting her mouth slip apart from his, she turns them and pushes him backward toward the bed.

He's shaking all over again when he sinks down onto it, staring up at her with his hands framing her waist, her own hands curled over the sides of his neck. His eyes are shining and very clear - and wet, and another twinge of pain lances through her as she swings her leg across his and lowers herself into his lap. His hand sliding up her back, his callouses rough on her skin; he keeps reminding her that _he's_ rough, rough where Glenn never was and never could have been, and that's good.

It can't be the same. It can't be the way it was. She doesn't want a replacement.

She doesn't want to fuck a ghost.

He swallows. Licks his lips, closes his eyes. Lowers his head. He can't look at her. Abruptly she wants to grab his damp hair and _make_ him, but instead she strokes his face, gentle, and thinks of a confused animal. Frightened.

“I want you.” She shifts her weight lower and she feels him, a hard bulge pressing against her mound, and heat surges into her cunt like she's been slapped there. She doesn't try to fight her own whimper. She needs him to know. “God, I want you so bad.”

He releases a groan, helpless, and she reaches between them and palms him, and he twitches into her hand and bares his teeth against her throat.

So he doesn't have to say it back to her.

It's as if she's back in her dream, the first one where he was in her, the way he shudders when she slides her hands under the hem of his shirt and runs them up the fluttering muscles of his belly. He's simply holding onto her, still not meeting her eyes, and when she starts to tug his shirt off he helps her one-handed, but she can feel how all at once it's much more difficult, and when his body comes into view she can guess why. And it's somehow not surprising, all those cruel scars slashed across his skin - old scars from a long time before the world ended - but she draws a soft breath, his shirt forgotten in her grip.

He doesn't cringe when she touches him. She can tell he's at war with himself to keep from doing so.

“It's okay,” she breathes. Drops the shirt and runs her fingertips over him. “Daryl, it's okay, it's-”

This time when he kisses her, silences her, it's with a ferocity that makes her gasp.

The rest of it is a surreally vivid blur.

Remembered in flashes later: his naked skin warm-hued in the lamplight, scars cut into sharper lines when the lightning briefly returns and flickers through the window. Bending and trailing her lips over an especially bad one across his chest, the sound he makes when she does, like it hurts and like it’s something beyond hurting - and it's a sound she knows, as if he's reaching into her and pulling it into him, making it his. Climbing off him long enough for him to get his boots and pants and shorts off - fast and clumsy - and straddling him again, moaning when she gets her hand around his cock and once again he twitches in her palm. He's so _different,_ she can't stop noticing it, not as long but thicker, his precome slick between her fingers and his blood humming through his veins.

His face, the way it twists and smooths out as she glides her hand up and down. His voice, rasping and broken, and her name. His cry when she lifts herself, guides him to where he needs to go, lowers onto him.

She cries out with him, not quite as sharp or as loud, and then he's muffling it in the hollow of her neck, arms around her. Her fingers raking into his hair as she rocks in his lap, tightens around him and pushes him deeper. She was hooking her nails into his scalp, whining through her teeth, but when he sobs she eases and strokes him, presses her cheek to his forehead and murmurs something even she doesn't understand.

Soothing him. Comforting, almost. Even as her own eyes are burning.

_It’s alright._

She braces her hands on his shoulders and starts to move.

Like every other part of this, it's awkward. Not the kind of thing you forget, but it's like she _has_ forgotten it, and it's like he's not sure what to do at all, clutching at her as she half rises and half rolls, trying to find a rhythm. But he feels so good. It hurts right down to her marrow but he feels so _good_ in her, for the first time in a year she doesn't feel empty, and she drops her brow against his and breathes.

Breathes with him.

Another flicker of lightning, turning his face to hard shades of white and black, and it's like a trigger. He grips her tighter, so tight it's nearly painful, and flips her over.

She gasps, catches herself on her elbows, stares at him. The movement was sudden and obviously uncalculated, and he slipped out of her as he did it - and now he's practically looming over her, staring back at her with dark, shining eyes as he sets one knee against the edge of the bed and bends. And all she can say - again, hoarse and aching - is his name.

She slides back, he crawls over her, spreads her. Plunges into her.

This time they don't have to struggle with a rhythm. He finds it right away and he pounds it into her, his hands fisting in the sheet at her sides. Every part of him is coiled, clenched, and she grips him with her knees and her thighs and curls her fingers over the back of his neck, groans with every thrust. He's almost _angry,_ growling at her, ducking his head to scrape his teeth along her collarbone - and no, he's not angry at her. That's not what this is.

She knows what this is.

She tangles his hair around her fingers and jerks his head up, meets his fiery eyes and pins him with hers. Doesn't let him go as he goes rigid and wrenches and shudders. And everything in her seems to collapse as he spills into her. Fills her.

Like she already knew he would, he comes in absolute silence.

~

The lamp is off. The last of the storm passes. All it leaves is the sound of water dripping off the eaves. Inside there's only his panting, hers, gradually slowing as his entire body goes soft on top of her, his face pressed into the pillow. Once more, she's stroking his hair. His horribly scarred shoulders. She's not thinking about it. Her hands are guiding themselves.

It's okay to cry again.

_It's okay to rest now._

~

At some point he pulls out of her, falls to her side, and she turns to face him. Curls an arm under her head. Touches him, not hurrying - exploring him in a way she didn't before. He doesn't touch her, and it's clearly hard for him, his muscles by turns tense and quivering, but he lies still and lets her do it. And little by little it's not so hard for him anymore.

At some point he breathes a name and it's not hers. At some point she whispers a name and it's not his.

She doesn't want him to be _him_. He doesn't want her to be _her_. That doesn't mean those people aren't here now.

She doesn't feel guilty. This isn't wrong. They're both exactly where they should be. One way or another they were always headed here. Now that they've arrived, they've discovered that neither of them was ever traveling alone.

~

So finally he does touch her. Much later, and she's half asleep and turned away from him when she feels his hand on her, gliding up her side from her hip. She sighs, nestles back into the inward curve of his body, feels him nudging partially erect against her ass. But all he does is touch her. All he does is pass from her side to her belly and upward again, up to her breasts, tracing their undersides. All at once she's aware of how heavy they feel, aching like the rest of her did. Her breath catches when his fingertips reach her nipple and circle it - something inexpert about it, as if he's finding his way. But she's been sensitive there in a whole new set of ways since she gave birth and it feels so good, hot little sparks of pleasure scattering along her nerves from where his fingers are toying with her, and she arches and shivers, covers his hand with hers. Shows him with gentle pressure what she wants.

Doesn't have to show him what to do when his hand drops between her legs.

He's still inexpert but more confident now, nosing between her lips, settling over her clit and pressing, and it doesn't take much. Her hand over his again, though he doesn't need much guidance as he works her, and in what feels like mere seconds she's coming, biting her lip in a cascade of moans as it ripples through her.

His mouth against her shoulder, breath warm on the nape of her neck. Lips moving. She has no idea what he's saying; she doesn't need to know.

He doesn't withdraw his hand. It's still there when she falls asleep.

~

But she's awake at dawn, facing him again. The light is gray and thin but enough to illuminate half his face, and his eyes glitter when he blinks. She lifts her hand and lays it over his cheek, and she's faintly surprised when he lifts his own and weaves his fingers through hers.

“I want you to stay,” she says, very soft. “I want you to be with me.”

Wordlessly, he nods. And when she shifts closer, close as she can get, and tucks her head under his chin, he folds his arms around her and holds her. He might speak. She's never sure.

_Me too._

_Come home._

 


	11. wind in your hair, sun in your eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, this thing grew another chapter. There will be a shortish epilogue after this one, which I'll try to post in the next couple of days. There was just some stuff I wanted more resolved before I did what I plan to do in the final bit. 
> 
> I say again, this has been so much better-received than I ever thought it would be. I've come to love this story a lot, so it means a lot that other people are enjoying it too. ❤️

  

> _To live in this world_
> 
> _you must be able_  
>  _to do three things:_  
>  _to love what is mortal;_  
>  _to hold it_
> 
> _against your bones knowing_  
>  _your own life depends on it;  
>  and, when the time comes to let it go,  
>  to let it go._
> 
> \- Mary Oliver, "At Blackwater Pond"

 

Daryl has drifted back to sleep when she gets up, moving quiet as she can, pulls on her robe and pads softly down the hall to the room Enid has claimed. She pushes open the door without waking her, crosses the creaking floor to the crib, lifts Hershel into her arms. He fusses, but only a little, and as she settles him against her chest, it subsides and he nestles into the faded terrycloth, his head tipped against her breast and his tiny mouth open as if already seeking her nipple.

She smiles, faint. Shifts him up to her shoulder, turns and carries him out, and shuts the door silently behind her.

Down the stairs. The house is asleep, but even inside its walls she can sense the Hilltop stirring, rousing itself for the day. The clouds must have blown away and new sunlight is streaming in through the windows in the wide front hall, and when she opens the door, the air that sweeps in is warm.

Everything dripping, still. Everything wet and shining.

The top step of the porch has remained mostly dry, and she goes to it, sinks somewhat awkwardly down onto it. She's sore, she's realizing now. Sore everywhere but especially in her thighs, her hamstrings, and between her legs - not very, not even unpleasantly so, but it's there. The good ache you get when you work a muscle you haven't made use of in a long time.

It wasn't a dream this time. He was inside her, and he made her feel it, and she feels him now.

A couple of older women passing across the muddy yard, carrying a rake and a hoe - they're relative newcomers, but everyone knows Maggie by now, and they wave to her. She waves back, gives them a small smile, and carefully lowers Hershel from her shoulder into the cradle of one arm as she tugs the fold of her robe open with the other and guides his mouth to her nipple.

There's no reason to be self-conscious about this and there never was. Not with anyone, so not with him.

She sits there on the porch and feeds Hershel, feeling warmth creep from him through her, and the sun inches up to the steps and climbs them to her, creeps along with it. She closes her eyes into it, her face tipped up and her world all flushed red behind her lids - and when she hears the boards squeak behind her she doesn't have to look to know who it is.

The solidity of his presence. Last night he was all shadows, but now he's as warm as the sun, and he's just as strong.

He pauses, doesn't move, and she isn't bothered; she senses it's not anxiety or hesitation now, though he must know she's aware of him. He's merely looking at her, taking the chance to look without the discomfort of being looked back at, and she's happy to allow it to him. He won't be sorry about what happened, nor will he wish he had done something else, no more than she does, but he'll be working through it. Mulling it over. Figuring out what it means.

Though it doesn't have to be complicated. At heart it's very simple.

At last he grunts softly and sits down beside her, rests his arms on his bent knees and goes back to studying her. He keeps no bed here in the house but he has a stash of clothes in an upstairs closet, and out of the corner of her eye she sees that he's changed into clean pants and a button-down shirt with torn sleeves - yet another one, it kind of makes her want to smile again - and his feet are bare.

She hardly ever sees that.

“G’morning,” she murmurs, not turning to him. Gazing down at Hershel, who’s clearly slipping into a contented doze though he's still nursing, and she feels Daryl’s gaze following hers, the calm meditation in it. He only grunts again - not that he doesn't want to respond, but that he's comfortable in the idea that it's the only response she needs.

It might be a while before he says anything much to her.

But he surprises her. Turns his eyes out to the yard, she sees when she shoots him a glance, and bites at his thumbnail. Blinks in the sun.

“It's over,” he says, low - and he could be talking about the storm. Most people would assume that he is.

Most people would be wrong. Or at the very least not completely right.

“Yeah.” She sighs, dips her head. “It is.”

It might not be. Not completely. But the worst of it, yes. The worst of it passed on last night. The storm took it when it went, carried it away in its rain and its thunder. Now they have to discover what to do next, and it's not a discovery that troubles her. They don't get to come back, but whatever comes after this, she doesn't fear it. She senses he doesn't either.

“Y’alright?”

She does look at him, finally, and she does smile. Not wide, but deep; she feels it right down to her bones. It's been a year since she smiled like this, and like that other muscle, it feels like a stretch. Like getting ready to run, and not _from_ anything.

“Yeah. Yeah, I really am.”

He meets her eyes for a few seconds more, and then a smile of his own tugs at the corner of his mouth, and as he ducks his head it grows. Never a big smile, not for Daryl Dixon, but he never needs one. His smiles say ten times more at a quarter the size of most people’s.

And that's when she's completely sure he's okay. That he _will be_ okay.

Long silence. She lets it roll itself out, watches more people pass, mostly in twos and threes, going to their various jobs. It might still be wet, but it's going to be a beautiful day, and everyone is radiating good mood, the kind that's in a significant portion relief when it comes after a bad patch of time. Eventually Jesus and Sasha appear, getting into a car pulled up near the gate. Going out after the medication she and Daryl flagged. If they're lucky, they might come back with more than that.

Anything is possible.

“I miss her,” he says, and his voice is so soft it's not far from a whisper, but she hears it clearly, and her throat tightens. It's not as if it's something she doesn't want to hear, but last night hurt, and it's not done hurting. And it shouldn't be.

“I know.”

“I miss her so fuckin’ _much_.” His voice cracks at the end as his head drops further, hair hanging in his face. All at once she wants to reach up and sweep it back, but she leaves him alone. He needs to be with this, and he needs to be with it on his own, even if he's _not_ alone, because she's here beside him and she's not leaving him. Not ever. “I miss her every fuckin’ day.”

He's confessing, as much as he can. Not confessing a sin, or a fault, but there's more to it than _I miss her,_ and she's known it since he sat in the barn with her and said what he said, like he screamed it aloud. What Beth was to him. What she is. But he won't be able to say the words now, not yet, and she's not going to force him.

It's possible that even he doesn't know. Not all of it. And it's not her place to teach him that.

Except _I know you don't want me to be her._ And he never questioned what she meant.

Part of him knows everything.

“Me too. And I miss him.” Just as soft as he is, and trembling. Not much, but she is. “I always will. It never goes away. It never stops hurtin’.”

_But even if we don’t get to come back, maybe we get to move on._

_We can't be who we were. We have to be who we are._

He swallows, releases a shaky breath - and reaches for her hand, curls his fingers around it and squeezes. Touching her like that and in no other way, and there's something so deeply chaste about it, almost childlike, and it breaks her fucking heart and hurls it together again all at once. He's holding _onto_ her. He's asking her something he can't put into words.

So she squeezes back.

“I wanna stay with you,” he breathes, and it's rough. Through his hair she catches the sheen of tears on his cheeks. “I don't wanna leave no more.”

She waits, her own eyes burning, Hershel a sweet little sleeping weight against her chest. All warm, bathed in sun. She knew already, but he's _saying_ it, and she can't fully imagine what it took for him to find the courage to do that. How hard he must have fought for that much thrown out there in words rather than in every other way he speaks.

How in the last few months he's barely spoken full sentences, and now he's telling her this.

She brings his hand to her mouth, presses her lips slowly to his knuckles. Speaks against them.

“So stay.”

He nods. Doesn't say anything else. Another moment or two and he wipes at his face with his other hand, seeming vaguely irritated - but only vaguely. He clears his throat and raises his head, returns his gaze to the yard and the treeline beyond it. The ripples of breeze through the turning leaves.

Hershel is completely asleep, his mouth gone loose and slipped away from her, making tiny baby snores. She looks down at him and, on impulse, lifts him gently away from her breast. Daryl accepts him when she lays him in his arms, but it's still unexpected, his eyes widening slightly - and then the deep instinct that he's always seemed to possess takes over and he holds Hershel as naturally as he ever has, as he held Judith that first time, cradling him with such exquisite care.

Looking down at him as if he's a miracle. As he does every time, like a child is a constant revelation.

She doesn't speak again. There's nothing else that needs saying. She watches the two of them for a while, until her eyelids grow heavy and she leans over against his side, her head on his shoulder and her eyes falling closed. As easily as he's holding her son, she feels his cheek against her crown, his lips.

She's not going to leave him. And there's no way in hell, and never has been, that he's going to leave her.

Not anymore.


	12. epilogue: halfway to heaven from here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. The end. I'm not sure whether or not this will be the only fic I write in this pairing; I feel rather like I might have gotten it out of my system as far as writing it goes, but we'll see. I do love it - or I love this image of it - so never say never. 
> 
> I'll probably be throwing together a playlist for this ship/fic at some point, and while [the song](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KqnL6ie_FTw) from which I'm drawing this chapter title ("New World" by Bjork) probably be won't on it - I don't feel like the mood is quite right - I do feel like nevertheless it's a good finale. It's also a song that routinely makes me cry, so it's appropriate for that reason as well I guess. 
> 
> ❤️

   

> _Meanwhile the world goes on._  
>  _Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain_  
>  _are moving across the landscapes,_  
>  _over the prairies and the deep trees,_  
>  _the mountains and the rivers._  
>  _Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,_  
>  _are heading home again._  
>  _Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,_  
>  _the world offers itself to your imagination,_  
>  _calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -_  
>  _over and over announcing your place_  
>  _in the family of things._
> 
> \- Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"

 

She's drowsing when he stirs next to her, and the baby in his arms lets out a little cough and a half-hearted whimper - really more of a mutter, the distant hint of what’ll one day become speech. Something’s alerted both of them, and while she doesn't shift her body away from his side, she lifts her head from his shoulder to see what it is.

Enid approaching, carrying a familiar - sizable, now - bundle in her arms.

A smile pulls at Maggie’s lips, and she sits up, blinking and rubbing the heel of her palm against one eye. She's not certain exactly how much time has passed, but they're into the full of the morning, the sun even brighter, and the Hilltop well and truly awake. She should go into the house, exchange the robe for some real clothes and get her own day going - but not just yet.

There's really no reason to hurry. Not now.

Daryl is turning toward her, holding out the baby, and she opens her arms and accepts as readily as he did, bending her head and making soft shushing sounds, though there isn't any particular need for her to do so. Enid has reached them and stops, puffing theatrically.

“Jesus, he's getting big.”

“Yeah, well, put him the hell down.” Daryl levers himself to his feet, releasing his own theatrical groan, and his spine cracks in a couple of places as he stretches. Maggie looks up at him, still rocking the baby, amused.

“You’re gettin’ old.”

He huffs, otherwise ignores her and makes his way down the steps to where Enid is standing. As he does, a breeze sweeps up and brushes his hair back, and before his face is out of her view, as the sun touches him she sees him clearer than she did. Clearer than she often does. The lines and the smooth places, the way his eyes always look faintly tired even when he's not, the way the world has left its marks on him. Weathered him. Scarred him. The parts of him exposed now and the parts of him only she sees.

Yes, he's getting old. They all are.

They're the lucky ones.

Enid shifts the bundle in her arms, makes to lower it down - and it's not a _bundle,_ nothing like that when Enid carries him. Nothing like that when any of them carry him. If Daryl is getting old, if she is, if they all are, then Hershel is included in that, and he hasn't been that small for a long time. He's smiling when Enid grasps him under his arms, bends, sets him on his bare feet and holds onto his upraised hands. He loves this, loves hopping around on the swing of someone’s arms, and he curls his fingers tightly around hers as his smile splits into a wide grin - and he's all glossy dark hair and dark eyes and brilliance.

Wobbling brilliance, but brilliance all the same.

Enid shoots Maggie a glance, her own smile wry as she tucks Hershel’s ridden-up shirt back into place. “He used to holler about getting picked up. Now all he wants is to get put down.”

“Maybe he just don't trust you to carry him ‘round no more.”

Enid rolls her eyes and opens her mouth - no doubt to offer a retort - but Maggie can see Daryl’s face again, and there's something there besides his customary dry, gentle teasing. He's watching Hershel with unusual intensity - unusual even for him - and he drops into a crouch, leaning forward on his knees.

“Let ‘im go.”

Enid arches a brow. “He's gonna fall over and cry. You think he looks fine now, he's been a jerk all morning.”

Daryl waves a hand at her in a gesture that, coming from someone else, might appear dismissive. But it's merely absent. He's barely hearing her. All his focus is locked in one place, on one person.

“Alright. But you're dealing with him when he does.” Cautious, moving slow, she disentangles her fingers from Hershel’s and leaves him standing - wobbling - on his own.

He looks around, brow furrowing. Uncertain. His arms are up, waving slightly, as if he's struggling for balance. But he doesn't fall, and the breeze strokes his hair back from his beautiful little face, allowing the sunlight to pour unhindered into his eyes - _Glenn’s eyes_ \- and make them shine, and Maggie realizes she isn't sure when she last took a breath.

“C’mon,” Daryl murmurs. “C’mon, tough guy. Show me whatcha got.”

Hershel lets out a soft coughing sound, not far from a nervous chuckle, and takes a single shaky step forward.

Another. And another, and another, staggering but not falling, and by the time he steps into the circle of Daryl’s arms he's broken into a clumsy half-trot - and Daryl scoops him up and pushes to his feet, bouncing a squeal of surprised, delighted laughter out of Hershel’s chest, and Maggie’s tears rob her vision of any more clarity. In fragments she sees Daryl swinging Hershel around and smiling as wide as she's ever known him to, smiling as wide as he did the first time he held Judith, and Enid rushing up with her hands pressed to her mouth, and somewhere close by she hears Sasha breathe, “Well, holy _shit_.”

The baby in her arms hiccups, gropes at the base of her neck, and she clears her throat and looks down, wiping at her face. “I'm fine,” she murmurs. “Everything’s just fine.”

Huge blue eyes stare back at her, solemn. Knowing. Maggie drags in a shuddering breath and leans down, presses a kiss to the baby’s warm, soft brow. More groping, and when she leans back, a silver flash catches her attention.

Tiny fingers hooked through the double heart pendant dangling from her throat. The baby lifts it, brings it close, holds it with both hands and turns it this way and that, studying it. Intense - and thoughtful, as if working through some especially deep puzzle.

“You like that? You can have it. When you're old enough,” she adds, the corner of her mouth curling. “When I'm sure you're not gonna try to eat it.”

As if in defiance, the baby pulls it close enough to gum its edge, and Maggie laughs and tugs it away. The chain is sturdy, but even so. “Yeah, see? Not now. You’ll get there. Meantime, aren't you proud of him? Look at him.”

She raises her head and gazes out at the morning, at her family - which is home, where no one place ever can be. Hershel is on the ground again, stumping back across the few feet between Daryl and Enid, waving his hands and crowing with the sheer simple pleasure of movement.

“Look at your big brother, Beth.”

Once again the world vanishes into a blur, and this time she doesn't bother wiping it away. She's seen it. She's seen everything, and in whatever time they have left, there's still so much to see.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, this might be the most _definitively_ happy ending I've ever written. You're welcome. 
> 
> (I'm sure I don't need to remind you that comments are nice but just in case)


End file.
